Saving Seafood

Vessel Slow Speed Zone SW of Nantucket in Effect Through December 14

November 30, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is triggering voluntary vessel speed restriction zone (Dynamic Management Area or DMA) southwest of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

This DMA was triggered on November 29, 2020, when an aerial survey team from the New England Aquarium sighted right whales in the area.

Mariners, please go around this area or go slow (10 knots or less) inside this area where right whales have been seen.

South of Nantucket, MA DMA is in effect through December 14, 2020

40 01 N
40 22 N
070 07 W
070 59 W

Other Slow Speed Zones

South of Nantucket, MA DMA is in effect through November 30 (expires today)

40 59 N
40 23 N
069 05 W
069 52 W

Southeast of New York City Slow Zone is in effect through December 2

40 41 N
40 01 N
073 03 W
073 55 W

Southeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey in effect through December 5

39 25 N
38 44 N
073 44 W
074 36 W

Read the full release here

Organizations come together to save endangered turtles after transport flight encounters challenges

November 30, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Endangered sea turtles rescued from the beaches of Cape Cod, MA, are now in the care of Audubon Nature Institute’s Coastal Wildlife Network (CWN) in New Orleans, LA, after a long but successful journey over the Thanksgiving holiday that required collaboration among several organizations.

For weeks, rescue and rehabilitation efforts have been underway as hundreds of cold-stunned sea turtles wash up on the beaches of Cape Cod, MA, suffering from life-threatening medical conditions that are a result of weeks of hypothermia and the inability to feed brought on by plunging ocean water temperatures. Staff and volunteers with Massachusetts Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary rescue the turtles and take them to the New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital and to National Marine Life Center, where they are stabilized before being flown to secondary rehabilitation facilities along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico to continue treatment.

On Wednesday, pilots with Turtles Fly Too were transporting 30 Kemp’s ridley turtles to CWN’s Aquatic Center in New Orleans when they encountered strong headwinds and storms. The severe weather slowed the trip, forcing them twice to refuel and change course to avoid winds. When the pilots tried to take off after a second refueling in Chattanooga, TN, a rock kicked up and damaged the plane’s propeller, requiring repairs that prevented it from flying. Staff from Turtles Fly Too, NOAA Fisheries, and the New England Aquarium began contacting colleagues to find emergency housing for the turtles overnight. The president and CEO of the Tennessee Aquarium mobilized his staff to drive to the airport, pick up the turtles, and bring them to their offsite facility.

“It’s easy to fall in love with sea turtles and appreciate the dedicated professionals who work tirelessly to save these endangered animals,” said Keith Sanford, the Tennessee Aquarium’s president and CEO. “Our team was happy to provide assistance to this important rescue and rehabilitation project.”

Veterinarians from the Tennessee Aquarium and New England Aquarium worked together to provide care for the turtles, sharing animal records and performing health exams. While the turtles were kept overnight in Chattanooga, the organizations worked around the clock to create a plan to transport the turtles to their original destination.

Read the full release here

66 turtles rescued from Cape Cod beaches, New England Aquarium says

November 20, 2020 — More than 60 turtles stranded on Cape Cod beaches have been rescued so far this fall and taken to New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy, as rescue workers face new challenges because of the coronavirus pandemic, the aquarium said Thursday.

At Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, employees and volunteers scour the beaches for turtles stunned by the cold weather, sometimes suffering hypothermia and malnutrition, and take them to the sea turtle hospital, the aquarium said in a statement.

Though the season has just begun, 66 turtles have been treated so far, including Kemp’s ridleys, loggerheads, and leatherbacks, and more are expected in the coming days, the aquarium said.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Plastic measures: Report lays out dangers plastics pose to marine life

November 19, 2020 — When Dr. Charles Innis, the lead veterinarian at the New England Aquarium, cut into a 400-pound leatherback sea turtle that had washed up dead on Sandy Neck in November of 2015, he was looking for cause of its demise, signs of disease or parasites.

What the necropsy team encountered was a 3-foot-square sheet of plastic lodged in its stomach.

By any measure, this turtle had experienced the worst that mankind could dish out. Shell deformities and X-rays revealed extensive fractures of the shell and vertebrae from a collision with a vessel. Heavy abrasions and lacerations around the front flippers indicated it had been entangled in fishing gear and that was believed to be the likely cause of death.

But the plastic, which when floating in the water resembles the jellyfish that are the leatherback’s favorite food, would have killed it eventually by blocking its intestine, Innis concluded.

From plastic netting and lines, down to the tiniest nanoplastics that can be eaten by zooplankton and enter the food chain, our seemingly endless seas are choking on plastic, and so are the animals who live there, according to a report released Thursday by the international ocean advocacy nonprofit Oceana.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Scientists Have Not Detected A Single Right Whale In The Bay Of Fundy This Year

October 15, 2020 — For the first time in four decades, marine scientists were unable to find any North Atlantic right whales in the Bay of Fundy this year.

“Always we would have a handful, even in recent years. So to have zero is certainly disturbing or frustrating,” says Amy Knowlton, a New England Aquarium whale researcher who has been tracking the endangered species from a base in Lubec every year since the early 1980s.

She says that for decades, anywhere from a 50-150 right whales showed up in the summer and fall to forage. The numbers started to drop off around 2010, as water temperatures in the Bay and Gulf of Maine began to rise at a rapid clip.

“It’s just a reflection of how the ocean is changing with climate change, and their food resource, plankton, they’re not blooming at the same time and in the same areas that they used to, so it’s a reflection that for them and for our oceans things are changing pretty dramatically,” Knowlton says.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Extended: Slow Speed Zone South of Nantucket to Protect Right Whales

October 5, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

In Effect to October 20

NOAA Fisheries announces an extension to the previously triggered voluntary vessel speed restriction zone (Dynamic Management Area  or DMA) south of Nantucket.

This DMA was originally triggered by an August 31, 2020, sighting of an aggregation of right whales and previously extended until October 9, 2020. A  New England Aquarium aerial survey observed an aggregation of whales in this area on October 4. Since the current DMA is set to expire in less than a week we are extending it until October 20, 2020.

Mariners, please go around this areas or go slow (10 knots or less) inside this area where groups of right whales have been sighted.

South of Nantucket DMA is in effect to October 20.

41 16 N
40 32 N
069 37 W
070 28 W

Read the full release here

NOAA Extends Vessel Slow Speed Zone South of Nantucket to Protect Right Whales

September 29, 2020 — NOAA Fisheries announced that they are extending the vessel slow speed zone south of Nantucket due to North Atlantic right whales

NOAA initially announced the voluntary vessel speed restriction zone, or Dynamic Management Area (DMA), on August 31. The DMA was extended until September 29, and now it’s been extended again until October 9 after a New England Aquarium aerial survey observed an aggregation of whales in the area on September 24.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Northern Right Whales Are on the Brink, and Trump Could Be Their Last Hope

July 9, 2020 — When boaters spotted a dead North Atlantic right whale off Elberon, N.J., on June 25, marine biologists quickly established the identity of the hulking gray carcass.

With only about 400 such whales left in the world, every individual is known to researchers and cataloged. This one, the six-month-old calf of whale No. 3560, had been struck several times on the head, suggesting one or possibly two vessel collisions.

On Thursday, such whales, which got their name because they float after being killed and thus were considered the “right whale” to hunt, were placed on the Red List of critically endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the last classification before they are gone from the wild. The task of responding will fall to an unlikely champion, President Trump, whose recent appeals for support from Maine lobstermen could clash with the task of saving the right whale.

Peter Corkeron, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium who spent nearly a decade chronicling the gruesome deaths of right whales as the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s research program for large whales, said he feared the listing would have little impact.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Cape scientists forge ahead with right whale research

April 7, 2020 — Over the past week, New England Aquarium scientist Philip Hamilton, manager of the right whale identification catalog at the aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, has received photos of about 30 right whales taken by people walking the shoreline around Race Point and off Nahant.

Unfortunately, researchers hoping to see them from the air and sea during what they consider the epicenter of right whale migration into Cape Cod Bay essentially have been grounded by weather and coronavirus.

“We lost 22 days there,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, a senior scientist and director of the Right Whale Ecology Program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.

COVID-19 fears forced the New England Aquarium to close March 13. Admission fees account for 80% of their $3.5 million in annual operating expenses, and the aquarium announced layoffs and furloughs last week to cut costs.

The Center for Coastal Studies did not lay off anyone, spokesperson Cathrine Macort said, but its offices and lab are closed. The center is watching expenses and applying for federal payroll aid.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Endangered right whales spotted in Cape Cod Bay during spring feeding season

April 6, 2020 — An increasing number of endangered North Atlantic right whales have been spotted feeding off of Massachusetts’ coast in recent weeks, a sign that spring is finally here, researchers at the New England Aquarium said.

The right whales live in shallow waters off the southeastern United States during late fall and winter, the aquarium said. After pregnant whales give birth to their calves while living with juvenile and male whales in the region during those months, the whales migrate to Cape Cod Bay during the spring to feed before heading further north.

“In a time when so much is changing around us, I find the appearance of right whales feeding in these waters as they have for hundreds, if not thousands, of years reassuring. Some ancient behaviors remain,” said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the aquarium.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe