Saving Seafood

New Jersey Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative still strong, 70 years and counting

February 15, 2023 — Established on July 1, 1953, the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative, Inc. of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., has been the home port of generations of New Jersey commercial fishermen.  The cooperative dock and packing house – or “the Co-op” as it is customarily referred to, is located near the entrance to the Manasquan Inlet.

The Manasquan Inlet sits between the Jersey Shore towns of Manasquan and Point Pleasant Beach.  The inlet is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and a major thoroughfare of maritime transportation.  Point Pleasant Beach together with the nearby town of Brielle, are home to a fleet of commercial and recreational fishing vessels.

Retired commercial fisherman and author Jim Lovgren explained that the Co-op was originally established by twelve members, all of whom were commercial fishermen.  The goal in forming the Co-op was to provide members with dock space, easy access to fuel and the packing out of fish for sale to various markets.

When the Co-op started, “the main species that the Co-op dealt with, was whiting for thirty years,” said Lovgren, a 2006 National Fisherman Highliner. Since whiting have all but vanished over the last 25 years, black sea bass, summer flounder, scallops and porgies are some of the most targeted species by Co-op vessels. All of the current Co-op members now are involved with operating draggers.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Ninth whale death renews calls in New Jersey to halt offshore wind projects

February 15, 2023 — A whale washed ashore in Manasquan, New Jersey, on Monday – the ninth whale found dead since early December on the New York-New Jersey shores — further stoking the debate about what’s causing the frequent mortalities along the Atlantic Coast.

“I’m currently standing on the beach a few hundred feet from the Manasquan Inlet watching yet another dead whale wash into the surf,” Point Pleasant Beach Mayor Paul Kanitra posted on Facebook on Monday. “Governor, when do these stop becoming coincidences? How many more will it take?”

What’s behind the whale mortalities has not been clearly established, but theories abound. Some local activists and officials blame offshore wind development in the region, claiming construction of the sites causes harm to marine animals. But federal officials have pushed back, saying that’s not what the evidence shows.

Read the full article at CBS News

NEW JERSEY: ‘Alarming & unprecedented’ — Why did whale wash up on Manasquan, NJ beach?

February 15, 2023 — A whale floating in the ocean off Manasquan Inlet Monday washed ashore late in the afternoon and reignited the debate over why it’s happening and whether or not work related to wind turbines is to blame.

Necropsy teams from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center and Atlantic Marine Conservation Society were on Manasquan Beach Tuesday morning. They identified the whale as a 35-foot juvenile female that was first seen along the Jersey Shore on Jan. 7, according to NOAA Fisheries.

The whale is being moved to the Monmouth County landfill in Tinton Falls where the whale will be examined, tissue samples taken and a necropsy will be performed.

Read the full article at New Jersey 101.5

The offshore wind and whales public relations duel

February 14, 2023 — This winter’s grim series of dead whales on East Coast beaches brought on a simmering public relations battle, as opponents and supporters of offshore wind energy projects work to shape the debate.

Stranded whales on New York and New Jersey beaches in December and January brought out the Clean Ocean Action environmental group and allies from beach towns and commercial fishermen who have been fighting for years against offshore wind development in the New York Bight.

They demanded that all work be suspended on offshore projects while the whale deaths are investigated. The calls grew louder in recent days, with another humpback whale and a highly endangered North Atlantic right whale found in Virginia.

Yet another whale washed up at Manasquan, N.J. Monday afternoon. One witness was Mayor Paul Kanitra from neighboring Point Pleasant Beach, who was one of a dozen Jersey Shore mayors who signed a recent letter to federal officials demanding a moratorium on offshore wind work pending an investigation of the whale deaths.

“It’s the size of a bus and it could easily come ashore in Point Pleasant Beach,” Kanitra wrote in a Facebook post, addressing New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. “I guarantee you if it does we will personally test it and get to the bottom of this. Governor, when do these stop becoming coincidences? How many more will it take?”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Whales Are Dying Along the East Coast. And a Fight Is Surfacing Over Who’s to Blame

February 14, 2023 — In mid-January, threatening social media messages started showing up on the accounts of a small New Jersey organization devoted to rescuing ocean mammals that wash up on the beach. Some said “we’re watching you.” Others accused staff of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC) being “whale murderers.” Some people wrote that they were going to show up at the group’s Brigantine, N.J., headquarters and “make” members of the wildlife organization “come to [their] side.” “You don’t know what they’re gonna do,” says Michele Pagel, 49, the group’s assistant director. “Are they gonna march in here and put a gun to somebody’s head?”

Staff members contacted local police, and they started locking the doors to the group’s office. In late January, someone left the door unlocked, and a man burst into the office and approached the secretary. “He just starts [yelling], ‘I want to know, I demand to know,’” says Shelia Dean, 75, the group’s director. “He was very frightening.”

Along with picking up sick baby seals and dolphins, the MMSC helps to carry out examinations on the bodies of dead whales when they wash up on the shores of New York and New Jersey in order to collect scientific data, and hopefully help determine a cause of death. And in recent months, whales have been washing up on these shores with alarming frequency. Eight large whales, including sperm whales and humpbacks, have washed up in the area since December. Those deaths have become a focal point in the clean energy culture war, with conservative media commentators blaming them on preliminary site-mapping work for offshore wind developments. But evidence to support those claims hasn’t turned up. That’s brought down the ire of many people opposed to offshore wind on small animal welfare organizations like MMSC for supposedly hiding the truth of what killed those whales.

The work to actually examine those carcasses is grueling and tedious. It involves sourcing backhoes or other construction equipment to maneuver the school bus-sized animals, taking measurements, and then, when possible, undertaking difficult necropsies. A trailer parked in front of the MMSC’s offices houses the necessary equipment: smocks and boots, along with large knives and hooks for pulling off layers of cetacean skin and blubber to examine the animal and take tissue samples. It’s a messy, smelly business. In humpback whales, gasses from the whale’s putrefying innards often begin to swell the sack under the whale’s mouth. If it bursts, it can splatter anyone standing nearby with whale guts. If a whale had broken bones from being hit by a ship, for instance, the necropsy can help examiners tell if the ship strike occurred before or after the whale died. MMSC and other groups that collaborate on the necropsies then forward that information to the federal government, which provides some of their funding.

Read the full article at Yahoo News

Wind energy gets scrutiny following whale deaths

February 10, 2023 — Politicians, citizens and some environmentalists are calling for a slow-down or complete halt of wind energy activity off the East Coast as officials examine the cause of a rash of marine animal deaths, but neither action nor an answer appears to be imminent.

In January, the debate landed on the shores of Worcester County with the body of a humpback whale, which immediately led to speculation regarding the cause of its death.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is examining samples taken from the whale, but representative Allison Ferreira said that it will take “weeks to months” to receive the necropsy report.

“Given that necropsy reports provide a comprehensive account of the stranding event, ranging from a description of external observations and internal examination findings to the diagnostic results of samples taken, they can take several weeks to months to complete and finalize,” Ferreira said in an email.

A few days later, Ferreira added that preliminary findings from the necropsy indicate vessel strike as the cause of death.

“But we do not know (definitively) if it was struck before or after death,” she said. “Results from samples taken from the whale may help inform this, but we may never know.”

Read the full article at Ocean City Today

What we know — and don’t know — about offshore wind and whale deaths

February 9, 2023 — Offshore wind development in US East Coast waters has been blamed for a flurry of dead humpback whales off New Jersey and New York. But what do — and don’t — we know?

Since 2016 there has been an unusually high incidence of humpback whale deaths on the US East Coast: a total of 180 animals, of which about 40 percent had evidence of entanglement in fishing gear or being struck by vessels. The US National Marine Fisheries Service works with other organizations to examine dead whales found at sea or beached to determine the cause of death. The other cases remain undiagnosed because of decomposition, the inability to tow the whale ashore, lack of access to the whale, or an indeterminate cause.

Investigations of large whale mortalities can take many months, but NMFS has stated that the recent mortalities show no relation to offshore wind development. So what are the potential risks for whales of offshore wind development?

Marine mammals are sensitive to noise, which can result from weather events, earthquakes, and human sources, such as sonar, bottom drilling and coring, seismic air guns, and explosions. The effects can range from behavioral change to temporary or permanent hearing loss, and occasionally mortality. Most deaths related to acoustic exposure have been in toothed whales and dolphins related to sonar. There has been no recent evidence of humpback or other baleen whales dying from noise exposure.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

NEW JERSEY: Recreational fishermen will hate this: Regulators want more spiny dogfish in the water

February 7, 2023 — Federal fishery regulators slashed the coastwide commercial quota for spiny dogfish by nearly 60%, from just over 29 million pounds to 12 million pounds.

The Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission’s spiny dogfish management board based its decision on declining trends in several indicators including survey abundance, catch per unit of effort, pup production and dogfish growth. New Jersey’s share of the quota fell from 2.2 million pounds, to just over 900,000 pounds.

While recreational fishermen have little palate for spiny dogfish ,which is viewed by this sector as more of nuisance fish that voraciously feeds on juvenile sea bass and fluke, and tangles up fishing line, gillnetters did establish a market for the spiny dogfish.

Read the full article at app.

An unusually high number of whales are washing up on U.S. beaches

February 6, 2023 — Researchers are trying to figure out a mystery: Why are so many humpback whales, right whales, and other large mammals dying along the U.S. East Coast? One possible explanation is a shift in food habits. And while theories are circulating that blame the growing offshore wind industry, scientists say there’s no proof to support that idea.

Since Dec. 1, at least 18 reports have come in about large whales being washed ashore along the Atlantic Coast, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. The losses are hitting populations that were already under watch, due to ongoing rises in unexpected deaths.

“Unfortunately, it’s been a period of several years where we have had elevated strandings of large whales, but we are still concerned about this pulse” in deaths that’s now been going on for weeks, as Sarah Wilkin, the coordinator for the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, said on a recent call with journalists.

Read the full article NPR

NEW JERSEY: 12 Jersey Shore mayors call for moratorium on offshore wind following whale deaths

January 31, 2023 — A group of Jersey Shore mayors are calling for an “immediate moratorium” on offshore wind energy development until federal and state scientists can assure the public that ocean noise related to underwater seabed mapping, soil borings and other turbine construction activities poses no threat to whales.

The announcement followed news that another humpback whale had died off of the coasts of New Jersey and New York and washed ashore in Lido Beach, Nassau County, New York, according to numerous reports.

“While we are not opposed to clean energy, we are concerned about the impacts these (offshore wind) projects may already be having on our environment,” the 12 New Jersey mayors wrote in a joint letter to Washington officials.

The mayors include six from Ocean and Monmouth counties: Joseph Mancini of Long Beach Township, Samuel Cohen of Deal, Paul M. Kanitra of Point Pleasant Beach, William W. Curtis of Bay Head, Lance White of Mantoloking, and Jennifer Naughton of Spring Lake.

Read the full article at MSN.com