Saving Seafood

Equinor to support New York Bight whales monitoring

April 10, 2019 — Offshore wind power developer Equinor Wind US is entering a joint project with conservationists and scientists to deploy two new acoustic buoys to expand detection and monitoring of whales in the New York Bight.

To be operated with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, the buoys will provide near real-time monitoring of species including sei, fin and humpback whales, and the extremely endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The buoys will become a broader network with a previously deployed acoustic buoy, funded by the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and the Flora Family Foundation, now on station about 22 miles off New York.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

How Do You Move a Shark? Very Carefully.

May 16, 2018 — In the open ocean, the sand tiger shark has been known to migrate more than 1,500 miles.

Moving a shark 100 yards across a construction site at the New York Aquarium to its gleaming new home is a different kind of undertaking altogether: an elaborately choreographed production requiring cranes, trucks, canvas slings and people in wet suits willing to grapple with animals with big scary teeth.

As a misty drizzle fell on Coney Island last Thursday morning, the shark movers gathered for a final safety meeting.

A senior animal keeper, Nicole Ethier, gave out marching orders like a football coach diagraming a complicated play. “Shane and Geoff, you guys will turn around and block the shark,” she said. “If the shark gets spooked and takes off, you’re going to have to start blocking.”

Geoff Gersh, a volunteer diver, was unruffled. He had encountered sharks while diving in the Bahamas. “As long as you don’t agitate it or give it any reason to feel threatened, they don’t want anything to do with you,” he said.

Minutes later, he and his colleagues stood in formation in shin-deep water in a tank of slowly circling sharks: sand tigers, sandbar sharks and a nurse shark. Some of them were nearly 9 feet long. All of them were agitated and had reason to feel threatened.

Read the full story at the New York Times

 

A canyon-sized power struggle is developing 100 miles off New Jersey’s coast

May 8, 2017 — It makes little sense that these two groups would be fighting at all.

On one side are the environmentalists, who wish to keep marine life safe from the harmful effects of gas and oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean. On the other are the fishermen, who want precisely the same thing — to protect their catches and their business.

Yet a divide between the groups has been created, approximately 100 miles east of the mouth of the Hudson River off the New Jersey coast. That’s where the two sides are waging war over the future of the Hudson Canyon, an almost-mile-deep crack in the sea floor.

It’s a battle that has become even more pitched, especially since President Trump has moved to bring oil and gas drilling back to the Atlantic Ocean.

So how did this power struggle develop, and what exactly are the two groups disagreeing about?

In November 2016, the Wildlife Conservation Society nominated Hudson Canyon to be designated a National Marine Sanctuary. The WCS selected the canyon, the largest submarine crevice on the Atlantic Coast, due to its wide biodiversity. The canyon is home to more than 20 protected species, including the North Atlantic right whale, according to the conservation group.

“This is a canyon the scale of the Grand Canyon,” said Jon Forrest Dohlin, the Vice President of the WCS and the director of the New York Aquarium. “It seemed like something that could really benefit from awareness and protection.”

Commercial fishermen in New Jersey fear losing access to a profitable fishing ground. According the Greg DiDomenico, the executive director of the Garden State Seafood Association, $48 million worth of seafood was caught in the Hudson Canyon in 2014. That’s almost a third of the $149.3 million catch landed by New Jersey fishermen that year, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the full story at NJ.com

MAFMC Overwhelmingly Rejects Hudson Canyon Sanctuary Proposal

Image courtesy of Hudson Canyon Cruise 2002

April 14, 2017 — On Wednesday, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council voted 15-4 in opposition to a proposal by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to name the offshore Hudson Canyon a National Marine Sanctuary. The proposal was widely opposed by both commercial and recreational fishermen.

“The proponents of the sanctuary nomination will eventually claim that commercial fishing in the sanctuary is a threat,” said Garden State Seafood Association executive director Greg DiDomenico, who testified in-person at the MAFMC meeting. “They will use the authority under the Sanctuaries Act to address those threats and restrict commercial fishing. In addition, they want to conduct science, and educate and organize a constituent base, all things that they can accomplish without making the Hudson Canyon a sanctuary. It’s that constituent base that they will use later to harm the commercial fishing industry.”

The American Bluefin Tuna Association (ABTA) praised the MAFMC’s decision to oppose the sanctuary nomination. In a press release today, ABTA wrote, “Notwithstanding statements made by the WCS at the meeting that sanctuary status would not affect fishing in the area, great concern was expressed by the Council for the fact that the Marine Sanctuary Act provides for a sanctuary to have ultimate statutory authority over fishing […] The MAFMC should be applauded for a bold decision taken at the appropriate time.”

The following is excerpted from an article published yesterday by The Fisherman:

In their official nomination, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and their Coney Island Aquarium staff outlined their specific reasons for nominating the offshore Hudson Canyon as a National Marine Sanctuary.

“Many people, whether they are ocean enthusiasts or have never set foot in salt water, will never make it out to the Hudson Canyon itself because of its distance offshore and accessibility being restricted to a half-day boat trip,” the letter says, adding “WCS has the unique opportunity to bring the wonder of the deep sea directly to millions of visitors each year through interactive exhibits within our parks.”

For thousands of coastal fishermen who don’t mind the “half-day boat trip” to the Hudson to tangle with mahi, tuna and billfish, there was good news on April 12 when the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) voted 15-4 in opposition to the WCS pitch to designate the Hudson Canyon as a restricted area of the ocean.

While claiming to have “community-based support for the nomination expressed by a broad range of interests,” the WCS marine sanctuary plan had actual fishermen and fishing industry leaders incensed.

In a letter of opposition on behalf of coastal fishermen, Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) executive director Jim Donofrio noted that regardless of the WCS’s intention, recreational fishermen would not have any legal protection under the federal sanctuary law.

Read the full story at The Fisherman

Read a press release from ABTA here

Read a letter from ABTA to the MAFMC here

NEW YORK: Acoustic buoy now detecting rare, endangered whales in New York Bight

November 17, 2016 — An acoustic buoy recently deployed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and WCS’s (Wildlife Conservation Society) New York Aquarium is making its first near real-time detections of two rare great whale species in the New York Bight, including the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.

On November 14th, the hi-tech buoy named “Melville” detected the telltale “up call” of the North Atlantic right whale, one of the world’s highly endangered whale species that numbers only 500 individual animals. It is the second detection of a North Atlantic right whale made by the buoy since October 26th. The acoustic buoy made another rare find on October 31st with the detection of a sei whale, a species that grows up to 65 feet in length and is rarely observed in New York waters.

North Atlantic right whales are particularly vulnerable to getting hit by ships, so any information on the whereabouts of these animals along the coast is important. Researchers from WCS and WHOI report that the North Atlantic right whale detected on October 26th was outside of the New York Harbor Seasonal Management Area (SMA), one of a series of zones along the eastern seaboard established to protect the slow-swimming whales with boat speed restrictions during their migration periods. Vessel speed restrictions for the mid-Atlantic seasonal management areas—including the SMA in New York Bight—runs between November 1st and April 30th.

“Having the ability to detect North Atlantic right whales and other species rarely seen in New York waters is extremely important given their endangered status,” said Dr. Howard Rosenbaum of WCS’s Ocean Giants Program and co-lead of the WCS New York Aquarium-WHOI project. “In particular, our ability to detect North Atlantic right whales in this area near the shipping lanes but outside these seasonal management areas will hopefully help with efforts to safeguard this highly endangered species in the New York Bight.

Read the full story at Phys.org

OCEARCH Tags and Releases Great White Shark Pups For The First Time Off Long Island

August 22, 2016 — MONTAUK, N.Y. — Meet Montauk and Hudson, two young-of-the-year great white sharks just tagged and released off Montauk, NY by OCEARCH and its collaborative team of multi-disciplined scientists.

“This is an exciting marine conservation event right here in our New York seascape,” said Jon Forrest Dohlin, Director of WCS’s New York Aquarium.

“We’ve learned a lot about the adult sharks in recent years, but the pups are still a complete mystery,” said Tobey Curtis, lead scientist and Fisheries Manager at NOAA Fisheries. “Tagging these baby white sharks will help us better understand how essential Long Island waters are for their survival.”

Montauk, a 50-pound, 4-foot female white shark, and Hudson, a 67-pound, 5-foot male white shark, are the first two white sharks tagged by the shark-tagging partnership in New York waters. The tags on these young-of-the-year sharks will allow scientists to track their movements up and down the coast for the next several years.

The team, which includes researchers from WCS, NOAA Fisheries, South Hampton Schools, Florida Atlantic University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Stony Brook University, collected blood samples, fin clips, parasites, muscle sample and took measurements of the sharks. Each sample provides baseline data previously unattainable for great white sharks in this initial phase of life.

Read the full release at Marketwired

Beware: Sharks are on the rise near East Coast

August 15, 2016 — “There are definitely more sharks in the area,” Paul Sieswerda, former curator of the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, told The Post. A perfect storm of successful shark conservation efforts, less-polluted waters, and warmer ocean temperatures from climate change has made our shores more welcoming to bait fish like menhaden — and the sharks who love them.

“It’s kind of like the menhaden are the wildebeests of the African plains — everything likes eating them and there are more every year,” Sieswerda said.

He said the huge schools of menhaden, a k a bunker, also attract seals, which is a favorite of great white sharks.

Read the full story at the New York Post

Garden State Seafood Association lauded for conservation efforts by New York Aquarium and Urban Coast Institute

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – September 28, 2015 – The following was released by the Garden State Seafood Association: 

Ernie Panacek, President of the Garden State Seafood Association (GSSA), Richard B. Robins, Chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and Jay Odell, Director of the Mid-Atlantic Marine Program at the Nature Conservancy will be recognized as Regional Champions of the Ocean for the roles their organizations played in the preservation of 38,000 square miles of ocean floor in the mid-Atlantic as habitat for native deep-water corals and other marine organisms.  The awards will be given on October 29 at the 11th annual Future of the Ocean Symposium at Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute. Also to be recognized as National Champions of the Ocean will be Dr. Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence, and Terry Garcia, National Geographic Society Chief Science and Exploration Officer.

This honor follows the recognition of GSSA’s Executive Director Greg DiDomenico and Council Chairman Robbins as Conservation Leaders by the New York Aquarium at their Sip of the Sea event on September 16th. This event was further recognition of the successful effort to protect coral in the offshore canyons of the Mid-Atlantic.

The habitat preservation resulted from an unprecedented cooperative effort between the fishing industry and the conservation community. Facilitated by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the protection preserves unique deep water environments, while allowing commercial fishermen to sustainably harvest the region’s abundant fish and shellfish. GSSA hopes this process will set a precedent for future cooperative efforts, avoiding the antagonistic confrontations of the past.

According to GSSA’s Ernie Panacek, “As is the nature of all successful compromises, the result didn’t give either side exactly what we wanted, but we all can, and will, live with it. With the Mid-Atlantic Council acting as referee, it’s our hope that we’ve opened the door to future cooperative efforts.”

“We demonstrated that two stakeholder groups; one committed to the preservation of our living marine resources and the other to balanced sustainable harvest, can work together to protect the resource, while preserving each side’s interests,” said GSSA Executive Director Greg DiDomenico.

Mid-Atlantic Council Chairman Richard Robins said “this historic action by the Council was made possible by the cooperation of a broad group of fishermen, advisors, coral researchers, conservation groups, Council members and staff.”

Unfortunately, this process stands in stark contrast to an ongoing campaign launched by the Conservation Law Foundation and other environmental groups. These groups have called upon the Obama Administration to circumnavigate the existing process and unilaterally declare a National Marine Monument in the Gulf of Maine surrounding Cashes Ledge.

The successful outcome in the mid-Atlantic region resulted from a good faith effort by concerned individuals and organizations, utilizing existing administrative mechanisms, to develop a “bottom-up” compromise solution. As it did in the mid-Atlantic, the existing ocean governance system will work in New England. All it takes is a good faith effort.

View a PDF of the release here