Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: NOAA report sends mixed message on wind power and risk to whales

September 26, 2024 — Federal agencies have reauthorized a controversial permit for Vineyard Wind’s final phase of construction, allowing the wind farm developer to continue pile driving with some impact on endangered whale species.

The permit allows Vineyard Wind to finish pile-driving the foundations for its wind turbines in proximity to whales. It does not declare that the industry will not harm whales. It calls it “extremely unlikely” that it will hurt any North Atlantic right whales. But it says a small number of whales of other species may experience temporary to permanent hearing impairment as a result of the noise from pile-driving.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

ALASKA: U.S. Department of Commerce allocates $39.5 million in funding for Alaska fishery disaster

September 25, 2024 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo announced today the allocation of $39.5 million to address a fishery resource disaster that occurred in the Alaska Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery from 2023 to 2024.

“As climate change continues to have severe impacts on the fisheries and ecosystems that are vital to Alaska’s economy, the Department of Commerce remains committed to providing disaster relief across the state,” said Secretary Raimondo. “This funding will help Alaskans recover from the Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery disaster, support the community’s efforts to prevent future disasters, and keep jobs, recreation and cultural connections thriving.”

Congress provided fishery resource disaster assistance funding in the 2022 and 2023 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Acts. NOAA Fisheries determined that this fishery is eligible to receive a funding allocation from those appropriations. The funds will improve the impacted fisheries’ long-term economic and environmental sustainability. The allocation may fund activities in support of commercial fishing and other associated industries affected by the disaster.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

 

US Congress kicks NOAA funding debate down the road in favor of short-term spending bill

September 24, 2024 — The U.S. Congress is postponing debate over 2025 funding for NOAA Fisheries – and several other partisan spending disagreements between the House and Senate – in favor of a temporary spending bill that would avert a government shutdown.

With the 2025 budget deadline of 30 September fast approaching, federal lawmakers are scrambling to pass a bipartisan short-term spending bill that would keep the government operating over through 20 December and push back any difficult budget debates until after the November elections.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NOAA’s proposed clam protections spark concerns among CNMI residents

September 24, 2024 — AT a NOAA Fisheries public meeting at the Crowne Plaza Resort on Thursday, Sept. 19, local residents shared their concerns regarding a proposed rule change for giant clams that could list five species as endangered and one species as threatened.

NOAA Fisheries is also seeking to regulate the import and export of four separate clam species because they have “similarity of appearance” to the at-risk clam species.

According to John Rippe of NOAA Fisheries, the process to list 10 clam species as endangered or threatened began with a petition in 2016.

The following year, NOAA conducted a status review of some of the clams to determine the species’ “current and future extinction risk.”

Read the full article at Marianas Variety 

Long-Running Sea Scallop Survey Diversifies for the Future

September 24, 2024 — Our sea scallop survey has been providing data on population status since 1979. Over that time, the stock has recovered from very low levels to a population large enough to support one of the nation’s most valuable single-species fisheries. The status of the population isn’t the only thing that’s changed. Increasingly sophisticated ways to track sea scallop populations have come along. We have adapted and diversified our survey methods to take advantage of them.

Adding Survey Capacity

While we started with one vessel surveying the entire area with a dredge, the area is now divided among our science center and several partners, including the sea scallop industry, who use both dredges and optical (photographic) instruments deployed from research and commercial scallop vessels. All these data are used for stock assessments and for quota setting.

This year, for the first time, our science center’s survey covered Georges Bank and adjacent waters using a dredge, a towed camera–and–sensor system called HabCam, and our newest sampling device—a long-range autonomous underwater vehicle nicknamed “Stella.” These were deployed off three different vessels: a university-owned research ship, a commercial sea scallop vessel, and a NOAA research vessel.

Stella, the Long-Range Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

The most recent addition to our survey capacity is Stella, our long-range autonomous underwater vehicle. It carries the same imaging package as our towed sampling system, the HabCam, but can be programmed to operate without human supervision. Stella is being developed with partners at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“Stella was developed for surveying inside the new wind energy development areas,” said Peter Chase, who is in charge of our center’s resource surveys. “It’s one way to capture data to replace towed HabCam sampling in those areas.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

2024 Sea Scallop Survey Results

September 24, 2024 — Among the highlights of our 2024 Integrated Sea Scallop and HabCam Research Survey are strong numbers of two-year-old scallops observed in both dredge samples and HabCam images. These were found in the southern part of the Great South Channel, the eastern portion of the Nantucket Lightship Area, the northern portion of Closed Area I, and in the Elephant Trunk and Hudson Canyon South areas in the Mid-Atlantic. Sea scallops typically reach harvestable size at about age 4 and older.

This is also the first survey that included three cruises, exclusively used a commercial vessel for dredging, and deployed a long-range autonomous underwater vehicle (LRAUV).

This year, we deployed the HabCam V4 and a new LRAUV, nicknamed “Stella,” from the R/V Hugh R. Sharp, owned and operated by the University of Delaware. Then, we completed a dredge survey aboard a chartered commercial scalloper, F/V Selje. Finally, we deployed both the HabCam V4 and Stella from the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow.

The HabCam IV and Stella vehicles continuously photograph the ocean bottom while they collect other data about conditions in the waters in which they operate. The dredge is a standardized 8-foot-wide New Bedford sea scallop dredge that collects sea scallops and associated bycatch for biological analyses along with some environmental variables.

The Atlantic sea scallop population is surveyed every summer by NOAA Fisheries and partnering research groups, supported through the Sea Scallop Research Set-Aside program. This year those partners are:

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

NOAA sends $277M to Alaska fisheries after years of delays

September 23, 2024 — The Biden administration has released $277 million in fishery disaster aid to Alaska that was held up for years by a problem-plagued software update at NOAA.

The release of long-awaited disaster assistance dollars will help communities affected by 10 disasters that contributed to the collapse of critical commercial species, including cod, crab and salmon that drive the state’s multibillion-dollar fisheries economy.

Half of those disasters — including sharp declines in Copper River and Prince William Sound salmon dating to 2018 — preceded the Biden administration and were to be paid with funds already appropriated by Congress.

Read the full article at E&E News

Mysterious Pacific Ocean sounds identified as a type of whale—a new AI app helps track them

September 23, 2024 — A team of oceanographers and marine biologists from the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and Oregon State University has identified a mysterious noise heard in the Pacific Ocean for two decades as the sounds of Bryde’s whales.

In their study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, the group identified the sound and worked with a team at Google to develop an AI application that could be used to track the ‘ movements.

The mysterious sound was first recorded in 2014, when its metallic ping was designated a “biotwang.” Since then, the sound has been recorded multiple times in multiple locations. In 2016, a team at Oregon State University found evidence that it was most likely some type of baleen whale.

Read the full article at Phys.org

US denies port privileges to foreign vessels accused of IUU fishing

September 21, 2024 — Foreign commercial fishing vessels accused of illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) fishing by the U.S. government will be denied access to American ports beginning 10 October.

NOAA Fisheries has revoked port privileges to vessels from 17 nations under the High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act, a law that requires NOAA to identify nations whose fishing vessels are engaged in IUU operations or activities that result in bycatch of protected living marine resources or sharks. Once NOAA Fisheries identifies a nation as engaging in IUU fishing, it enters a two-year consultation to fix the problem. If the issue is not resolved in that period, NOAA Fisheries can issue a negative certification and a denial of port access.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Scientists unearth key clues to cuisine of resident killer whale populations

September 21, 2024 — A team led by researchers at the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has uncovered key information about what resident killer whale populations are eating. Researchers had long known that resident killer whales—also known as resident orcas—prefer to hunt fish, particularly salmon. But some populations thrive, while others have struggled. Scientists have long sought to understand the role that diet plays in these divergent fates.

“Killer whales are incredibly intelligent, and learn foraging strategies from their matriarchs, who know where to find the richest prey resources in their regions,” said Amy Van Cise, UW assistant professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, who began this study as a postdoctoral researcher with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “So we wanted to know: Does all of that social learning affect  preferences in different populations of resident killer whales, or in pods within populations?”

In a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Van Cise and her colleagues report the cuisine preferences of two resident killer whale populations: the Alaska residents and the southern residents, which reside primarily in the Salish Sea and off the coast of Washington, Oregon and northern California.

Read the full article at PHYS.org