Saving Seafood

NOAA Fisheries Designates Critical Habitat for Ringed and Bearded Seals in U.S. Arctic

April 1, 2022 — NOAA Fisheries is designating critical habitat in U.S. waters off the coast of Alaska for Arctic ringed seals and the Beringia distinct population segment (DPS) of bearded seals. Both species are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The ESA requires that NOAA Fisheries designate critical habitat for listed species in areas within the jurisdiction of the United States.

Critical habitat identifies geographic areas that contain features essential to the conservation of a listed species.

For each species, the critical habitat area includes marine waters of the northern Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas. The critical habitat boundaries differ between the two species, reflecting differences in where the essential habitat features for each species are found. For each of the designations, the geographic extent of the critical habitat is discussed in detail in the final rule and is depicted on a map.

The final rule to designate critical habitat for Arctic ringed seals excludes an area of the Beaufort Sea used by the Navy for training and testing activities, based on national security impacts.

NOAA Fisheries considered public comments on the proposed designation, and used the best scientific data available, including independent peer review. Before designating critical habitat, we gave careful consideration to potential economic, national security, and other relevant factors.

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

Meet Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator

March 30, 2022 — To wrap up Women’s History Month, we sat down with Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator, to find out more about her career path, passions, and perspective on leading NOAA Fisheries. Explore her answers below.

Tell us a little about yourself. What are a few words that describe you?

I am a mom, wife, daughter, and sister. A reader. A conservationist, who has always loved nature and learning. I am an extrovert, drawing energy from people. But I need time to myself and like to restore my soul in nature. The older I get, the more I realize the importance of spending time with friends and loved ones. I am also super passionate about making a difference in the world.

Where did you grow up?

Little known fact: I did not grow up on the coast! I grew up in Syracuse, New York, the hub of New York State. I fell in love with nature at my family’s very rustic camp—or cabin—in the Adirondacks. We have a place you can get to by boat with no electricity and no plumbing! Yes, that means an outhouse. But this place was a North Star in my life. It’s still “off the grid,” and helped me appreciate wild places. That connection to a natural place seems to be at the heart of many careers in conservation and environmental policy. For those in the fisheries world, maybe that’s out on an estuary or on the open ocean. I still visit the cabin and feel every cell expand when I’m there. My children have grown up there, too.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

Western Pacific Council Asks for Remedies to ESA Consultation Delays, Monument Management Plans

March 29, 2022 — Endangered Species Act consultations through NMFS takes time, but the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council is tired of waiting.

Council Chair Archie Soliai reiterated concerns about NOAA Pacific Islands Regional Office delays in completing ESA consultations for the region’s longline and bottomfish fisheries when the Council met last week.

“Our experience with ESA consultations over the last several years have left us with the impression that our Council process is not respected,” Soliai said in a press release. “The Council is here to ensure the sustainability of our region’s fishery resources as mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act. We ask PIRO to provide us with realistic timelines and meaningful dialogue, so we may work together to complete these biological opinions and ensure that our fisheries can continue to operate in compliance with ESA.”

The Council said it will convey its concerns to Janet Coit, assistant administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), requesting assistance so biological opinions are completed in coordination with the Council.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NMFS, BOEM issue offshore wind ‘mitigation strategy’ for fisheries studies

March 25, 2022 — Offshore wind energy projects now planned off the U.S. East Coast will have an impact on at least 13 NMFS fisheries surveys, and a new draft ‘mitigation strategy’ has been proposed by the agency together with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Limitations on towing gear near turbine arrays, conducting aerial surveys and other impacts from the new energy industrial development are inevitable, and the new document out for public comment will be the subject of online discussions hosted by the agencies March 29 and March 30.

The strategy shows how the development of vast offshore turbine arrays could have profound effects on the annual survey work critical for keeping U.S. fisheries healthy and sustainable.

“For offshore wind developments with approved Construction and Operations Plans (COPs), the opportunity to avoid impacts has passed for NOAA Fisheries surveys,” the draft strategy acknowledges. “In these cases, this Implementation Strategy focuses on mitigating the impact over time through changes and additions to NOAA Fisheries surveys.”

There’s still time to reduce the future impact from additional wind developments, by documenting “impacts in the environmental review process and considering the impacts in the definition and approval process of future wind energy lease areas and lease sales,” the document states. “If these impacts are not avoided or minimized, this strategy can be used to mitigate the impacts.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

NOAA Fisheries Names Jon Kurland New Regional Administrator in Alaska

March 25, 2022 — Today, NOAA Fisheries announced that Mr. Jon Kurland is the new Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Region. He will assume his new duties on March 27, 2022. Mr. Kurland has been with the agency since 1990, serving in two regional offices and headquarters, including three senior leadership roles in the Alaska Region: Assistant Regional Administrator for Habitat Conservation, Acting Deputy Regional Administrator. Since 2012, he has served as  Assistant Regional Administrator for Protected Resources. He succeeds retiring Regional Administrator Dr. Jim Balsiger who had been in the position for 21 years.

“I am extremely pleased to announce this appointment,” said NOAA Fisheries’ Assistant Administrator Janet Coit. “Alaska’s waters support some of the most productive and valuable commercial fisheries in the world, and are also home to nationally and globally significant marine mammal populations and habitats. For Alaskans, the effects of climate change on these resources is real. I am confident that Jon will bring a unique awareness of these changes to this new role. I am excited for him to dive in.”

As Regional Administrator, Mr. Kurland will head the agency’s regulatory and management programs for fisheries, marine mammals, and habitat conservation. This includes the responsibility for managing approximately 105 employees and 20 contractors and other affiliates. The Alaska Regional Office is located in the capital city of Juneau, with field staff in offices in Anchorage, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor, Alaska. The office works closely with its counterpart, the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, in the science-based stewardship of marine life and their habitats in the waters of the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans off Alaska.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

MAINE: Rep. Golden asks for more lobstermen on panel

March 24, 2022 — U.S. Rep. Jared Golden (ME-02) called on the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) March 16 to expand representation of lobstermen on its Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team by including members of Maine Lobstering Union Local 207.

The Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team is charged with making recommendations to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for addressing rising North Atlantic right whale mortalities. Only four of the members of the 60-person team are Maine lobstermen.

“As the only industry organization comprised exclusively of lobstermen with active commercial lobster and crab fishing licenses, the MLU would bring an essential perspective to the ALWTRT,” said Golden. “For nearly a decade, the MLU has engaged with local, state and federal officials as well as the scientific community on various projects to improve our understanding of the distribution of right whales and their potential interactions with certain gear types and fishing effort.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Rule change calls for monitoring of all groundfish trips

March 23, 2022 — Webinars on proposed changes to how the commercial groundfish sector monitors its catch, both with monitors at sea and electronically, will be held this week by the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office of NOAA Fisheries (GARFO) in Gloucester.

The most significant proposed change is a monitoring coverage target of 100% aboard eligible trips, which is higher than present monitoring levels. The change is meant to remove uncertainty surrounding catch. This and other changes — known as Amendment 23— to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan were developed by the Newburyport-based New England Fishery Management Council.

The informational webinars on the changes are scheduled for Tuesday, March 22, Thursday, March 24, and Monday, April 4, from 4 to 6 p.m. The March events will focus on fishing industry members and the April event will focus on monitoring service providers.

According to a NOAA Fisheries fact sheet, the changes, if approved by NOAA Fisheries, would give groundfish vessels the choice of a human observer or using one of two types of electronic monitoring to meet the increased monitoring requirements, provided the sector has a corresponding approved monitoring plan and a contract with an approved service provider.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Maine lobster industry fights lawsuit that aims to shut down fishery

March 18, 2022 — While Maine’s lobster industry has been fighting an offensive legal battle against impending rules to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales, it also is playing defense in a case brought by environmentalists that seeks to shut down the lobster fishery entirely.

Lobster industry groups are intervening in a case brought in Washington, D.C.’s U.S. District Court by the Center for Biological Diversity and other plaintiffs that argues the new federal restrictions aren’t adequate, and that the fishery’s continued operation poses an existential threat to the whales.

The plaintiffs in that case, Center for Biological Diversity v. (U.S. Commerce Secretary) Gina Raimondo, are asking the court to vacate a National Marine Fisheries Service “biological opinion” that serves as the basis for the new restrictions and conservation plan, saying they don’t go far enough to meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Lawyers for the lobster industry recently filed a legal brief arguing that the environmental groups are misreading the two laws and attempting to force the state’s lobster fishery under federal jurisdiction.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Mid-water trawlers see win in challenge to Northeast herring exclusion zone

March 15, 2022 — A federal court ruling could reopen some Northeast waters to mid-water herring trawlers, after a 2019 rule change that shut them out of a broad swath of the nearshore Atlantic from Long Island to the Canadian border.

U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ruled Marcg 4 in favor of a lawsuit brought by the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, a trade group representing companies that fish for herring and mackerel. In November 2019 NMFS approved a measure from the New England Fishery Management Council to create an exclusion zone for mid-water trawling 12 miles offshore – with a bump out to 20 miles east of Cape Cod.

It was a culmination of two decades of debate over the impact of mid-water trawling, and complaints from other fishermen that it caused “localized depletion” of forage fish, disrupting ecosystems and their seasonal access to groundfish, tuna and other species.

“The council recommended the midwater trawl restricted area to mitigate potential negative socioeconomic impacts on other user groups resulting from short duration, high-volume herring removals by midwater trawl vessels,” NMFS Northeast regional administrator Michael Pentony wrote in 2019 in a decision letter approving the New England council’s proposal.

But in his opinion Judge Sorokin wrote that the “localized depletion” concept has not been adequately defined by the agency. That led him to decide the exclusion zone decision violated National Standard 4 of the Magnuson-Steven Fishery Management and Conservation Act.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New study offers improvements to estimating shellfish populations

March 14, 2022 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries: 

A new study, jointly conducted and funded by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), finds ways to reduce a source of uncertainty in the Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog population estimates: defining the efficiency of the survey gear. The study, published in Fishery Bulletin, is part of the Center’s long-running efforts to improve our understanding of shellfish.

The dredge efficiency issue, which dates to the early 1990s, is about how effective clam research survey vessels are at catching surfclams and ocean quahogs. The efficiency of a clam dredge—which is a measure of the proportion of Atlantic surfclams or ocean quahogs on the ocean floor that a dredge can catch—is one of the key variables in stock assessment population estimates. The efficiency of the dredge is a primary factor affecting the biomass estimate of the stock and therefore an important criterion determining how the assessment evaluates the status of the stock relative to management goals.

One way researchers measure efficiency is through field depletion experiments, where a dredge is run multiple times in a single area to measure the percentage of available shellfish it caught with each tow. These experiments are used in both the Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog assessments to help estimate their dredge efficiencies. There is no way to know what true dredge efficiency is, but conducting many depletion experiments allows scientists to make a reasonable estimate.

The first depletion experiment was conducted in 1997 as a joint effort between NMFS, academic scientists, and the clam fishery. This team carried out many such studies over the following 15 years, making this one of the longest running successful collaborations of this type. This recent study addresses the remaining uncertainty surrounding dredge efficiency by looking at data from this large set of depletion experiments conducted over two decades and examines the quality of these experiments and the efficiency estimates they produced. Specifically, the study took a close look at simulated depletion experiments, where scientists know what the true dredge efficiency is, to identify common characteristics of studies that do a good job estimating dredge efficiency compared to those that do a poor job.

By focusing on the “best” experiments and identifying field experiments that potentially produced inaccurate efficiency estimates, scientists can refine the set of depletion studies used to help estimate efficiency in stock assessments. This refined set of depletion studies has particular influence on non-model-based biomass estimates, which play an important role in verifying the model-based results and are commonly used in management. Once identified, characteristics of good and bad depletion experiments can also inform methodology used in future experiments.

“Identifying field depletion experiments with accurate efficiency estimates helps confirm present stock assessment models’ gear efficiency estimates,” said Leanne Poussard, of the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Coast Research Laboratory and the lead author of the study.

“Ms. Poussard’s work has rekindled interest in the cooperative depletion experiment dataset and produced important guidance for anyone undertaking similar experiments in the future”, said Dr. Dan Hennen of NMFS.