Saving Seafood

Mini baby boom births hope for right whales

February 14, 2019 — It appears that there has been some North Atlantic right whale whoopee going on, but whale researchers on Wednesday cautioned against viewing the recent sightings of six right whale calves as a sure sign of resurgence for the beleaguered species.

Whale researchers on Tuesday confirmed the sighting of the sixth right whale calf off the coast of Florida, elevating the 2018-2019 calving season above each of the past two years, but still well below the 20-year average of 17 calves per calving season.

“It’s definitely not enough to take the view that things have turned around for right whales,” said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.

Right whales migrate along the Atlantic coast each year, arriving in New England waters to feed in the late winter and early spring, congregating on Stellwagen Bank and off Cape Cod. They migrate south in the fall to give birth off Florida and Georgia.

Going into this calving season, whale researchers estimated there are only 411 North Atlantic right whales remaining in the oceans, down from about 500 in 2010.

The imperiled state of the North Atlantic right whale stock has thrust fisheries regulators, such as NOAA Fisheries, conservationists and fishing stakeholders into action to try to reverse the dire trend of a shrinking right whale population.

So, producing any right whale calves during the 2019 calving season— which runs roughly from Dec. 1 until late March —remains something of a cause for celebration. It represents a significant improvement over 2018, when none were born, and a (to date) modest increase over 2017, when five calves were born.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Right whale calves a hopeful sign for researchers

January 28, 2019 — The future of the North American right whale remains perilous, but researchers following their progress see hope in three calves spotted so far this winter off the Florida coast.

“It’s a spark of hope,” said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium. “It’s not even quite to the point of guarded optimism.”

The massive marine mammals migrate in the winter from the waters off Maine and Canada to the waters off northern Florida and southeastern Georgia for a calving season. Considered critically endangered, their total population is estimated at 411 animals. After a deadly year in 2017, with 15 deaths, and no calves born during the 2017-2018 season, whale advocates and researchers had awaited this calving season with trepidation.

An aerial survey team from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute photographed the latest mother-calf pair, whale No. 1204 and her calf, on Jan. 17 off Amelia Island.

No. 1204 has been particularly prolific, giving birth to at least nine calves in her lifetime. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission researchers said she’s one of only three right whales known to have given birth to nine calves.

Read the full story at the Daily Commercial

Shutdown Affecting Whale Rescues

January 24, 2019 — Rescuers who respond to distressed whales and other marine animals say the federal government shutdown is making it more difficult to do their work.

A network of rescue groups in the U.S. works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to respond to marine mammals such as whales and seals when the animals are in trouble, such as when they are stranded on land or entangled in fishing gear. But the federal shutdown, which is entering its 33rd day on Wednesday, includes a shuttering of the NOAA operations the rescuers rely upon.

NOAA plays a role in preventing accidental whale deaths by doing things like tracking the animals, operating a hotline for mariners who find distressed whales and providing permits that allow the rescue groups to respond to emergencies. Those functions are disrupted or ground to a halt by the shutdown, and that’s bad news if whales need help, said Tony LaCasse, a spokesman for the New England Aquarium in Boston, which has a rescue operation.

“If it was very prolonged, then it would become problematic to respond to animals that are in the water,” LaCasse said. “And to be able to have a better handle on what is really going on.”

The shutdown is coming at a particularly dangerous time for the endangered North Atlantic right whale, which numbers about 411, said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, a senior biologist with Whale and Dolphin Conservation of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The whales are under tight scrutiny right now because of recent years of high mortality and poor reproduction.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at CapeCod.com

2nd North Atlantic right whale calf spotted off Florida

January 17, 2019 — Another North Atlantic right whale calf and its mother have been spotted off Florida, the critically endangered species’ second confirmed newborn of the winter birthing season, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The mother, tentatively identified as #3317, is an important example of the ideal calving rate for a reproductively mature right whale female, said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.

“She actually gave birth three years ago,” Hamilton said about a previous birth, compared to the nine years between documented births for the season’s other right whale mother, #2791, spotted with a calf Dec. 28 off Jacksonville Beach, Florida. “That’s very heartening that at least some right whales are able to reproduce as quickly as they can.”

Right whale #3317 is about 16 years old, and has been spotted by government surveys since 2002 from Florida to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, according to the aquarium’s right whale database. She was spotted in Cape Cod Bay several times in 2016 by researchers for the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

Mass. AG sues to protect fishing, wildlife from offshore oil and gas exploration tests

December 27, 2018 — Attorney General Maura Healey Thursday joined a multistate lawsuit against U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to put an end to a plan that allows harmful seismic testing for offshore oil and gas resources in the Atlantic Ocean.

According to a news release from Healey’s office, the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, joins a challenge by environmental groups last week against Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) recently issued by NMFS that permit five private companies to harm marine wildlife in connection with seismic testing for offshore oil and gas exploration in the Mid- and South-Atlantic Ocean. Healey’s office said the action reflects her longstanding opposition to the Trump Administration’s plan to open up nearly all currently restricted ocean areas — including federal waters off the Massachusetts coast — to oil and gas drilling.

Healey announced the multistate lawsuit at the New England Aquarium alongside aquarium officials, fishing industry representatives, business community leaders, and environmental advocates.

“Approving these blasting tests paves the way for the Trump Administration to open up the Atlantic coast to drilling and poses a severe threat to our coastal communities, our fishing industry, and the health of the ocean,” said Healey, in the release. “Today we are suing to stop this reckless plan that allows the oil and gas industry to destroy fishing families, local businesses, and marine life.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Public Aquariums Join in Opposition to Seismic Blasting Along Atlantic Coast

December 21, 2018 — A coalition of major public aquariums have announced that they are opposed to the federal government’s pending issuance of permits allowing for repeated seismic blasting along the East Coast in search of offshore oil and gas.

The New England Aquarium says that marine scientists are concerned that the prolonged and extreme noise pollution introduced into already highly stressed ocean environments will disturb marine life from tiny plankton to commercially valuable fish stocks to giant whales.

The Boston-based marine conservation organization has joined the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, the North Carolina Aquariums and the New York Aquarium and parent Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in opposition to NOAA’s recent affirmation of the sound blasting program from Delaware to Florida.

“We do know that there are a range of effects from severe lethal mortality in a number of species as well as sub-lethal effects that effect the ability of animals to communicate with each other and find prey, which can essentially result in larger ecosystem effects,” said Mystic Aquarium’s Senior Researcher, Peter Auster.

“This is ultimately a decision about balancing the desire for exploration and finding new oil and gas deposits with our obligation as stewards of the environment. We just think that the decision that was made doesn’t consider all the risks and we hope that this garners greater scrutiny of the decision and then potentially other decisions down the road.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

How a new simulator helps scientists study whale entanglements

November 23, 2018 — More than 80 percent of North Atlantic right whales become entangled in fishing lines at least once in their lives, making it a leading cause of death for the critically endangered whale species. Now, with the help of new entanglement simulation technology, scientists at the New England Aquarium are working to change that.

Tim Werner, a senior scientist at the aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, is one of several aquarium researchers who collaborated with scientists from Duke University to develop a graphic model that gives them an opportunity to study entanglements and potential solutions in a practical and humane setting, aquarium officials said in a press release.

“This gives us a tool we can use right away to say, ‘If you have an idea, let’s evaluate it,’ and we can evaluate it over the course of several days rather than over the course of several years,” Werner said in a telephone interview.

The goal for developing the model was to reverse-engineer entanglements in order to figure out ways to modify fishing gear so that it poses less of a risk to helpless marine animals going forward.

“If you can re-create the way the rope wraps around the animal in the model, you can figure out how to change the gear to reduce the risk of entanglement,” Werner said, according to the release.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Losing lobster lines

November 6, 2018 — Scientists from the New England Aquarium will spend much of next year testing ropeless lobster gear as part of the escalating effort to mitigate entanglements with right whales and other marine species.

The research project, funded with a $226,616 grant recently received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will involve co-operative research with active lobstermen, possibly including some from the state’s most lucrative lobster port in Gloucester, according to one of the aquarium’s chief scientists.

“We want to get good technology in the hands of fishermen so they can evaluate its potential,” said Tim Werner, the aquarium’s senior scientist and director of its Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. “They need to be able to use it and find out what it needs to be functional.”

Werner said researchers already have begun to develop various types of ropeless traps, using different technologies to achieve the same goal of drastically reducing or eliminating entanglements of leatherback sea turtles and whales in the forest of vertical lines stretching from fishing gear on the ocean floor to the ocean’s surface.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

The Cultural and Historical Importance of Atlantic Salmon in New England

October 29, 2018 — For thousands of years, Atlantic salmon – known as the King of Fish – ran almost every river northeast of the Hudson. And for decades, the first fish caught in Maine’s Penobscot River was actually presented to the president of the United States in a “first fish” ritual.

But overfishing and dams brought populations to their knees and the commercial fishery for Atlantic salmon closed seventy years ago in 1948. For most of us, the closest we’ve ever gotten to an Atlantic salmon is the farm-raised variety in the fish market.

But, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is celebrating the international year of the salmon, and the New England Aquarium is marking the occasion with a public lecture by Catherine Schmitt, author of The President’s Salmon: Restoring the King of Fish and its Home Waters; and Madonna Soctomah, former Passamaquoddy Tribal Representative with the Maine State Legislature and St. Croix International Waterway Commissioner. That’s the St. Croix River in Maine and New Brunswick, not the Caribbean island.

The Presidential “first fish” ritual started in 1912 with angler Carl Anderson. He decided that he wanted to give his fish – which was the first fish caught on opening day April 1st – to the president of the United States.

Read and listen to the full story at WCAI

 

In Changing Climate, Endangered Right Whales Find New Feeding Grounds

October 10, 2018 — Amy Knowlton pilots the 29-foot research vessel Nereid out of Lubec harbor and into the waters of the Bay of Fundy, off of easternmost Maine. A scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life Knowlton points to harbor porpoises chasing fish in the wind-swept waters on a recent morning.

Then something much larger appears off the stern.

“Whale behind us,” Knowlton says, steering closer. “It’s probably a humpback or fin whale, we’ll get a better look.”

It turns out to be two humpback whales — a cool sighting, but not the kind she is after.

Knowlton is hoping to find the endangered North Atlantic right whales that she and her colleagues have been studying in these waters since 1980.

Right whales are large cetaceans, with big heads and no dorsal fins. Researchers used to count as many as 200 foraging here in late summer. But the whales became scarce starting in 2010, and their range shifted dramatically. Many more are now summering hundreds of miles north, off Canadian shores in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. More than 130 have been spotted there in recent months.

Marianna Hagbloom, a research assistant on Knowlton’s team, surveyed that area in August and said it was nothing like the Bay of Fundy.

“We had days where we were seeing about 50 individuals,” Hagbloom says. “Just right whales popping up left and right. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Read the full story at NPR