February 10, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries observers on the U.S. West Coast are moving to the use of tablet-based electronic systems to gather data on fishing vessels, replacing the outmoded pencil-and-paper system previously used.
Two of these systems are the ORCA 1 and 2 systems used by the West Coast Regional Observer Program and OPTECS system used by the West Coast Groundfish Observer Program.
Read the full article at SeafoodSource
February 9, 2023 — The first-ever cancellation of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab harvest was unprecedented and a shock to the state’s fishing industry and the communities dependent on it.
Unfortunately for that industry and those communities, those conditions are likely to be common in the future, according to several scientists who made presentations at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium held in late January.
The conditions that triggered the crash were likely warmer than any extreme possible during the preindustrial period but now can be expected in about one of every seven years, said Mike Litzow, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric scientist based in Kodiak. By the 2040s, those conditions can be expected to occur one out of every three years, he said.
Blame “borealization” for the disaster befalling snow crab, which is an Arctic species, Litzow said. That term refers to an ecosystem becoming boreal, with groups of organisms – called “taxa” by scientists – that have been south of the Arctic until recently.
“If we think about an Arctic animal at the southern edge of its range that’s exposed to really rapid warming, that leads us sort of inevitably to the concept of borealization,” said Litzow, director of NOAA Fisheries Kodiak laboratory and shellfish assessment program. “As you warm Arctic ecosystems, those systems become prone to a state change, where Arctic taxa such as snow crab become replaced by subarctic taxa that are better able to tolerate ice-free and warm conditions.”
Snow crab are dependent on the winter sea ice and the cold conditions created even after the seasonal melt, he said. While they are widely dispersed through the Bering Sea, the sweet spot for the commercial harvest – the place where the crab are big enough to be commercially valuable – is in the southeastern Bering Sea.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.