Saving Seafood

Gulf of Mexico has warmed at twice rate of global oceans

February 7, 2023 –A new study says sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have warmed about twice as much as global ocean waters since 1970.

Those findings indicate the Gulf of Mexico may be one more U.S. region where higher sea surface temperatures are outpacing global averages. Another is the Gulf of Maine, where the rate has been nearly triple of the world’s other oceans since the early 1980s.

The latest research comes from a joint effort between scientists at the National Centers for Environmental Information and the Northern Gulf Institute (NGI), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Cooperative Institute.  It quantifies the warming trend in the Gulf of Mexico’s ocean heat content over the past 50 years.

The study, published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, shows that waters closest to the surface in the Gulf of Mexico have increased at a rate approximately twice that of the global ocean in the decades between 1970 and 2020.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

U.S. takes aim at global shark fin trade

February 2, 2023 — The U.S. is about to take a bite out of the shark fin trade.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is currently reviewing the funding and implementation of a long-awaited ban on the trafficking of shark fins through U.S. ports, a move that could disrupt their broader global trade.

NOAA’s review comes after President Joe Biden signed the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act into law in December. It’s a move that some scientists and researchers have fought for years, pointing to a deep debate about just how the U.S. should use its influence to end the global fin trade.

On one side, many experts including some in NOAA and its parent agency, the Department of Commerce, have argued that the new law will undo decades of U.S. work to encourage sustainable practices.

Read the full article at NBC News

OPINION: A modest proposal for Alaska fisheries

February 2, 2023 — At the behest of Alaska’s Sen. Ted Stevens and Congressman Don Young, in 1976 Congress enacted the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which authorizes the U.S. secretary of commerce to regulate commercial fishing in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska seaward of Alaska coastal waters.

The Act established an 11-member North Pacific Fishery Management Council. While the Council purportedly is “advisory,” with only the rare exception, the secretary — in the guise of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — rubber-stamps whatever the Council recommends.

And there is the rub.

The Alaska Commissioner of Fish and Game has a permanent seat on the council. The secretary appoints five of the 10 other members from a list of three names for each seat that the governor of Alaska submits to the secretary. That enables the six Alaska members to control Council decision-making if they vote together.

The Council’s principal task is to decide how commercial fishing for pollock and other groundfish is conducted. Since catcher and catcher-processor vessels participating in the groundfish fishery earned $811 million in 2020, even minor regulatory restrictions can have significant adverse financial consequences for the companies, most headquartered in Seattle, that own the vessels.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News 

Fishing Restricted Off Mass. to Protect Right Whales

February 1, 2023 — Citing threats to the endangered North Atlantic right whale, federal officials are invoking an emergency rule to ban lobster and crab trap and pot fishermen from working in a vast area of Massachusetts Bay over the next three months.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Tuesday said the emergency rule, which was also deployed in 2022, means that trap and pot fishermen fishing federal waters in an area known as the Massachusetts Restricted Area Wedge “must remove all trap/pot gear from this area, and may not reset trawls being actively fished, or set new trawls in this area for the period from February 1 – April 30, 2023.”

Read the full article at NECN

Third entangled right whale of 2023 found; Biden declines petition calling for measures to reduce ship strikes

January 30, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries announced a North Atlantic right whale was spotted entangled by ropes off the coast of Georgia, marking the third right whale entanglement discovered in 2023.

The whale, nicknamed “Nimbus,” was spotted entangled 13 miles off the coast of Jekyll Island, Georgia, U.S.A. According to NOAA, a team of authorized responders and experts managed to remove 375 feet of rope from the whale, leaving a “short segment” in its mouth that the responders are “optimistic” will dislodge over time.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Crabbing industry loses fight to prevent fishing in critical Alaskan ecosystem

January 27, 2023 — Fishing in designated areas off the Alaskan coast will continue despite pleas from harvesters and conservation groups to close the crucial habitat known for its red king crabs and allow for minimal disruption during the offseason.

The emergency action would have potentially shut down designated zones in Bristol Bay until at least early summer, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the petition failed to reach criteria to determine that an emergency closure would benefit the sea life population.

Several species of crabs, including the red king, have seen stunning declines over the last decade that has prompted NOAA and other stakeholders to take the extraordinary steps of limiting season fishing in an effort to try to protect crucial populations.

“We are concerned about the diminished sophistication and understanding of marine habitats, which inevitably results in collapses and that are generally only made visible with the disappearance of commercially valuable species,” Marissa Wilson, executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, stated in prepared comments to NOAA.

Read the full story at Fox 7 Austin

U.S. refuses calls for immediate protection of North Atlantic right whales

January 26, 2023 — The U.S. government has denied two petitions to immediately protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales during the species’ calving season, raising concerns that this population of whales will continue to decline without intervention. There are currently about 340 of these whales left, making them one of the most threatened cetaceans in the world.

The two petitions — one filed by a consortium of NGOs, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), and the other by the NGO Oceana — asked the U.S. government to provide emergency protection for North Atlantic whales (Eubalaena glacialis). They called for three measures aimed to reduce vessel collision, a leading cause of death for these animals. The proposed rules included establishing speed limits for ships in designated coastal zones between North Carolina and Florida during the calving season; requiring speed reductions outside of these zones when a single whale or a mother-and-calf pair is spotted; and making such rules applicable for vessels 35 feet (about 11 meters) in length and longer.

There are already some seasonal speed zones on the southeast U.S. coast, but experts say they’re not big enough to encompass the species’ entire range, especially as climate change alters the whales’ movements. Additionally, vessels don’t need to slow down outside these zones unless in the presence of three individual whales, and the current rules only apply to vessels larger than 65 feet, or about 20 meters. However, as experts point out, smaller vessels have been responsible for right whale deaths, as seen in a collision between a 54-foot (16.5-m) sportfishing yacht and a calf and mother off St. Augustine, Florida, in February 2021. The calf’s dead body washed onto the beach the next day, and the mother, known to researchers as Infinity, hasn’t been seen again.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Recreational red snapper catch to be restricted by new federal regulations

January 26, 2023 — New federal regulations from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration will slash the amount of red snapper that recreation anglers in Mississippi can reel in unless changes are made, according to state leaders.

While the quota cuts won’t impact the commercial side, the changes on the recreational side are still a concern for the many fishermen who travel to the gulf each year and anglers who live there.

“We have a group of family and friends that fish regularly together,” said Michael Pierce.

Pierce lives and plays around Bay St Louis.

The coastal city, like so many others along the Mississippi sound, is a haven for anglers across the state.

“It’s great for like the kids. Something they can enjoy, because it is so easy to go out, catch your snapper,” said Pierce.

Red snapper is one of the most sought-after fish in the south.

NOAA regulates fishing in federal waters. Five gulf states, including Mississippi, receive a federal allocation.

Read the full article at WDAM

CONSTANCE GEE: ‘Strategy’ to protect right whales from offshore wind development is recipe for extinction

January 25, 2023 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a draft of their strategy to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (NARW) from the hazards of offshore wind development this past fall.

The report is a heartbreaking portrayal of the plight of the 336 remaining right whales. Approximately 230 animals have died over the past decade. Autopsies and photo documentation conclude that fishing gear entanglement and vessel strikes have caused the deaths. “Stressors” of industrialized ocean noise and dwindling food sources have contributed to reduced health and compromised body condition in 42% of the remaining population.

“Human-caused mortality is so high,” BOEM scientists state, “that no adult NARW has been confirmed to have died from natural causes in several decades; for a species that might live a century, most animals have a low probability of surviving past 40.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

14 whale deaths along US East Coast remain a mystery

January 24, 2023 — Local officials and environmentalists are trying to find out what is behind the mysterious death of 14 whales along the US east coast since 1 December.

Some are blaming the deaths on the development of an offshore wind farm in the area.

Officials, however, say they have found no evidence to suggest wind farms are to blame.

Since 2016, they have been tracking the “unusual mortality” of humpback whales along the eastern shores.

Over the past six years, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tallied 178 dead humpback whales from Florida to Maine.

NOAA performed necropsies on about half the whales and found that of those, 40% of the deaths were caused by human interaction, either being caught in fishing gear or struck by vessels.

Sperm whales, an endangered species, have also been found dead along the eastern coasts.

The most recent death of a humpback whale, which washed ashore in Maryland on 16 January, prompted a press conference by NOAA officials and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), as it came amid mounting concerns a local wind farm development was to blame.

Read the full article at BBC News