Saving Seafood

Quinn Fisheries, Blue Harvest sue Rafael trustee for blocking vessel sale, lawsuit says

April 28, 2021 — Quinn Fisheries and Blue Harvest Fisheries filed a lawsuit last week against Carlos Rafael’s trustee and three arbitrators, alleging they are blocking a multimillion-dollar transaction of vessels and permits that was scheduled to happen April 16.

The permits are for scallops and multi-species fish. The fishing seasons have already started or will soon start and because the transaction cannot be finalized, Quinn Fisheries and Blue Harvest state they will experience serious and irreparable financial harm.

According to the 19-page complaint, Quinn Fisheries planned to transfer certain vessels and permits to Blue Harvest, and then purchase vessels and permits from Blue Harvest.

The companies state the transaction will not “significantly dilute or otherwise jeopardize” the Rafael trust. The trust was established in 2019 to hold certain assets that, if not for a settlement agreement, would be held by Rafael, according to a document.

Rafael was convicted in 2017 for conspiracy and falsifying federal records, but was recently released from prison. As part of his settlement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), he was required to leave the fishing industry and sell his commercial fleet and permits.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Feds start review of endangered Southern Resident orcas

April 27, 2021 — NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service says it’s starting a five-year status review of the Southern Resident orcas.

NOAA Fisheries published a notice in the Federal Register about the status review last week, The Skagit Valley Herald reported. The whales were listed as endangered in 2005 under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Since the 1990s, the number of orcas in the three family groups — called J, K and L pods — that make up the population has dropped from the high 90s into the 70s.

The orcas, also called killer whales, live along the West Coast and frequent the Salish Sea.

Since 2005, the orca population has decreased from 88 orcas to a recent low of 72, according to the Center for Whale Research and NOAA Fisheries. As of February, the population was estimated at 75 with some recently identified calves.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

NOAA Keeps Deploying Fishery Observers But With Limits Amid Pandemic

April 27, 2021 — Considered essential workers, federal fishery observers have continued monitoring Pacific commercial operations during the pandemic, but COVID-19 restrictions have forced them to reduce — or even cease — operations in some areas.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dispatches observers to travel aboard fishing vessels to monitor the crew’s practices and what they catch – including any bycatch of endangered species. The goal is to preserve fish stocks and protect maritime ecosystems.

“Providing seafood to the country is an essential function, and adequate monitoring of our fisheries is important to the process,” NOAA spokeswoman Celeste Hanley said. “NOAA Fisheries has processes in place to maintain fishery operations and the monitoring necessary for sustainable management.”

However, fears of coronavirus spread prompted the agency to announce in June that it would give its regional administrators, office directors and science center directors the ability to temporarily waive observer requirements for vessels on a case-by-case basis based on local conditions.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Ken Sherman: Plankton Biologist With A Global Perspective

April 26, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Ken Sherman’s long career began with a fascination with fish at an early age. He was born in 1932 and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, where he spent time as a boy with his father at the Boston Fish Pier, watching the fishermen bringing in their catch. Although he intended to get a law degree while at Suffolk University, a mentor steered him  toward his earlier interest in marine biology. He graduated in 1954 with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences.

Not long after, he visited Woods Hole and applied for a job at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. While waiting for an opening, he taught science in elementary schools in western Massachusetts for the Audubon Society, taking live animals from school to school. In 1956 he was offered an entry-level biological position at the federal fisheries laboratory in Woods Hole. Turns out his application had been forwarded from the oceanographic institution down the street. His job: interviewing fishermen at the dock and collecting data on fish.

While working at the fish pier he took classes in marine ecology at Boston University, and later applied for an Office of Naval Research fellowship at the University of Rhode Island. He was accepted into the master’s degree program in biological oceanography at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. He worked under mentors Charles and Marie Poland Fish as one of five Navy-supported fellows.

After graduating in 1959 and waiting for a fishery research position to open, Sherman took a position as a biology teacher at Randolph High School. At the end of his first year of teaching, a biological research position with the federal Bureau of Commercial Fisheries opened in Hawaii. He jumped at the chance, and with his wife Roberta, also a teacher, moved to Honolulu for three years.

Read the full release here

Biden Taps A Former Top Scientist At NOAA To Lead The Weather And Climate Agency

April 26, 2021 — President Biden is nominating Rick Spinrad to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government’s premier agency on climate science which oversees the National Weather Service.

Prior to his current role as a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University, Spinrad served as NOAA’s top scientist under President Obama and the U.S. representative to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

The nomination comes at a difficult moment in NOAA’s history. The agency has been without an official, Senate-confirmed leader since former President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, after his two nominees to lead the agency failed to garner enough support to win a full vote before the Senate.

If Spinrad manages to win over the Senate, he will have to contend with a challenge beyond the agency’s already-rigorous scientific mandate: restoring public confidence in a traditionally apolitical agency marred by political scandal.

Read the full story at NPR

Citizen Scientists Help Reveal Undetected Hawaiian Monk Seal Reproduction

April 26, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

A group of NOAA scientists has published a new paper in Marine Mammal Science that improves their estimations of reproductive rates in Hawaiian monk seals. Sighting patterns reveal unobserved pupping events, which revises reproductive rate estimates for Hawaiian monk seals in the main Hawaiian Islands. They couldn’t have done it without the help of citizen scientists reporting monk seal sightings. NOAA relies on public reports to collect data on seals in the main Hawaiian Islands. It would be impossible to consistently survey all of the beaches along 750 miles of inhabited shoreline.

Hawaiian monk seals are among the world’s most endangered marine mammals, with only around 1,400 remaining. Most of the population (about 1,100 seals) inhabit the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The remainder (about 300 seals) live in the heavily populated main Hawaiian Islands. The monk seal has recently shown positive population trends in these islands. At the core of these encouraging data is the number of pups born each year.

Counting Pups

Hawaiian monk seals have pups throughout the year. NOAA sends teams of biologists to the Papahānaumokuākeakea Marine National Monument every year to count the monk seal population. And while the main Hawaiian Islands are densely populated with humans, monk seals often select secluded beaches for pupping. This makes it hard to know when and where to look, so it’s easy to miss some. And since we don’t always witness their birth, we don’t see or identify many of those seals until they are adults. That makes it difficult to estimate their age when they have pups of their own.

If we can improve how we measure maternal age and pup production, we can improve our estimate of the population’s reproductive rates. That enhances our ability to track population trends.

Citizen Scientists Make it Possible 

Unlike our work conducted from remote camps in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, it is not possible to routinely survey all beaches along more than 700 miles of coastline in the inhabited (main) Hawaiian Islands.  NOAA relies on public reports and volunteer citizen scientists to collect data on seals in the main Hawaiian Islands. Public reports and the contribution of volunteer citizen scientists allow our researchers to record many more pupping events on the main Hawaiian Islands. Our researchers were able to use these data in their study.

Public participation in monk seal monitoring vastly extends the coverage that agency biologists can accomplish alone. It also engages the community in stewardship of natural resources in Hawaiʻi. For example, with so many things shut down in 2020, NOAA biologists weren’t able to survey monk seals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. However, our information flow in the main Hawaiian Islands remained strong thanks to citizen scientists.

You can add to our data set by reporting your own monk seals sightings to the state-wide hotline at (888) 256-9840! Keep in mind, there is no need to approach a monk seal to make a report—always keep a safe distance from wildlife.

Thanks to these efforts, the newly published research describes the reproductive cycle and estimates reproductive rates of female Hawaiian monk seals in the main Hawaiian Islands.

Read the full release here

Biden taps ocean scientist Rick Spinrad to run NOAA

April 23, 2021 — President Biden has picked Rick Spinrad, an oceanographer with decades of science and policy experience, to run National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government’s leading agency for weather, climate and ocean science.

The White House announced Spinrad’s selection along with several additional climate and environmental nominees, including Tracy Stone-Manning, a senior adviser for the National Wildlife Federation tapped to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau for Land Management.

Spinrad, a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University, served as chief scientist at NOAA under President Barack Obama and before that led the agency’s research arm and ocean service. He also held ocean leadership positions in the Navy.

Named to lead the agency on Earth Day, Spinrad has been a champion of funding research to advance the understanding of climate change, a top priority of the Biden White House.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Expedition hauls tons of plastic out of remote Hawaii atolls

April 23, 2021 — A crew returned from the northernmost islands in the Hawaiian archipelago this week with a boatload of marine plastic and abandoned fishing nets that threaten to entangle endangered Hawaiian monk seals and other animals on the uninhabited beaches stretching more than 1,300 miles north of Honolulu.

The cleanup effort in Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument lasted three weeks and the crew picked up more than 47 tons (43 metric tons) of “ghost nets” and other marine plastics such as buoys, crates, bottle caps and cigarette lighters from the shores of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

The monument, the largest protected marine reserve in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world, is in the northern Pacific Ocean and surrounded by what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge gyre of floating plastic and other debris that circulates in ocean currents. The islands act like a comb that gather debris on its otherwise pristine beaches.

The ecosystem in the monument is diverse, unique and one of the most intact marine habitats on Earth. But the beaches are littered with plastic and nets that ensnare endangered Hawaiian monk seals — of which there are only about 1,400 left in the world — and green turtles, among other wildlife.

The crew removed line from a monk seal on the expedition’s first day.

With virtually no predators, the islands are a haven for many species of seabirds, and Midway Atoll is home to the largest colony of albatross in the world. There, the land is littered with carcasses of birds that have ingested plastics and died.

The cleanup was organized by the nonprofit Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project, which partners with the state of Hawaii and federal agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Post

Biden nominates Rick Spinrad to head NOAA

April 23, 2021 — U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that he has nominated Rick Spinrad, a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University and the former chief scientist for NOAA, for the position of NOAA administrator.

The nomination comes as NOAA is amidst the longest period without a Senate-confirmed administrator since its creation in 1970. Former U.S. President Donald Trump had nominated Barry Myers – the former CEO of AccuWeather – to the position in 2017, but his nomination was never brought to a full vote before Myers ultimately withdrew from consideration.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

‘If we’re not up there cleaning up this threat, nobody is’: Team hauls more than 47 tons of marine debris out of Pacific Ocean

April 23, 2021 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Wednesday that a team of scientists hauled 47.2 tons of marine debris out of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the North Pacific Ocean.

A crew of 12, which completed their expedition over 24 days, included staff from NOAA Fisheries, the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Hawaii Pacific University’s Center for Marine Debris Research.

Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is the largest contiguous fully protected conservation area in the U.S., encompassing an area larger than all the country’s national parks combined, according to the national monument’s website.

The monument is in the northern Pacific Ocean and surrounded by what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge gyre of floating plastic and other debris that circulates in ocean currents. The islands act like a comb that gather debris on its otherwise pristine beaches.

Read the full story at USA Today