Saving Seafood

Biden-Harris Administration invests $101.5 million for ocean observing systems

September 5, 2024 — Today, the Department of Commerce and NOAA announced $101.5 million in funding across 12 awards to expand equitable service delivery and support the modernization of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Regional Associations. U.S. IOOS supports ongoing data collection in U.S. ocean, coastal and Great Lakes waters and develops infrastructure and tools to make that data accessible. These funds are made possible by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.

“Thanks to President Biden and Vice President Harris’ ambitious climate agenda, we are giving communities, particularly frontline and underserved communities, the tools and information they need to build resilience to devastating weather and climate disasters,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “With this $101.5 million investment, NOAA’s IOOS will be able to improve and deliver critical information and tools to help coastal communities become more resilient to the impacts of climate change.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

Quiet Sound’s Voluntary Ship Slowdown Reduces Underwater Noise Reaching Killer Whales

September 5, 2024 — The arrival of endangered Southern Resident killer whales in Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound in September will trigger a voluntary slowdown for large commercial vessels. Last year, the slowdown reduced by half the underwater noise reaching the whales.

The Voluntary Large Commercial Vessel Slowdown is an initiative of Quiet Sound, a program of Washington Maritime Blue. It’s driven by a leadership committee composed of ports, agencies, tribes, and other groups collaborating to reduce threats from large commercial vessels to killer whales and other marine mammals. You can help by reporting whale sightings. The Whale Report Alert System will relay the sightings to mariners so they know when and where to watch for the marine mammals.

NOAA Fisheries named Quiet Sound a Partner in the Spotlight in 2023 after they successfully launched the first trial slowdown period in the fall of 2022. “The collaboration with our partners and industry is what makes this work,” said Gretchen Hanshew, acting branch chief for the Protected Resources Division in NOAA Fisheries’ Seattle office. “Quiet Sound saw measurable improvements last year, so I am optimistic that we may see even larger noise reductions this year. We know that makes a meaningful difference for the whales by reducing how much energy they have to spend each day to survive.”

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

NOAA: pile driving can be adverse to marine species

September 5, 2024 — The federal government is now saying that pile driving for the Vineyard Wind project is likely to have an adverse impact on marine life, although it won’t be a detriment to the population of the endangered North Atlantic right whales.

An announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in late ugust reads that the agency concluded the proposed pile driving for the installation of 15 remaining monopiles will “adversely affect, but is not likely to jeopardize, the continued existence” of whales, sea turtles, or fish listed in the Endangered Species Act.

“It will have no effect on any designated critical habitat,” the announcement reads. “NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate serious injuries to or mortalities of any Endangered Species Act listed whale including the North Atlantic right whale.”

The full biological opinion by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is not publicly available yet. NOAA spokesperson Andrea Gomez told the Times on Tuesday the new opinion will be available on the agency’s library website “any day now.”

Read the full article at MV Times

Data from Tagged Fish to Help Scientists Enhance Restoration Efforts

September 5, 2024 — NOAA scientists are collaborating with some unique partners to learn more about how several Chesapeake Bay species use natural and restored areas near Poplar Island, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The partners? Nearly 400 fish!

We have caught, tagged, and released fish to help us learn how they use restored marshes at Poplar Island compared with how they use natural habitat nearby in Back Creek.

Our “partner” fish carry transmitter tags, which are about the size and shape of a pill capsule. Our team carefully implants the tags into the fish. After being caught and measured, we transfer the fish into a bin with water from the same location where they were caught. Our trained specialist creates a small incision, inserts the tag, and then stitches the incision closed. Only fish that are longer than 8¼ inches are eligible to carry a tag. Then the fish is returned to the same location where it was caught.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

Shrimpers demand action on turtle conservation standards

September 3, 2024 — The Port Arthur Area Shrimpers’ Association (“PAASA”) and the Southern Shrimp Alliance jointly requested that the U.S. Department of State (“State Department”) re-visit and suspend the certifications granted to Peru and Guatemala under Section 609 of Public Law 101-162.

Based on a law enacted in 1989, the Section 609 program is intended to ensure that shrimp harvested in a manner that harms endangered sea turtles is not imported into the United States. Under the program, the State Department, working with officials from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) Fisheries, certifies countries and/or individual fisheries as being in compliance with Section 609’s requirements and therefore eligible to supply the U.S. market with shrimp.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

New Ocean Acidification Maps of US Waters

August 29, 2024 — Researchers from NOAA have produced a new online dashboard on the National Marine Ecosystem Status website that shows how ocean acidification is impacting eleven different marine ecosystems in the US.

These graphs, charts, and mapped products, which were also described in a recent paper for Nature Scientific Data, provide a resource to fisheries and natural resource managers and deliver simple snapshots of ecosystem status with respect to ocean acidification.

“The dashboard provides a regional context for anyone who wants to know how ocean acidification is progressing in US coastal ecosystems,” said Dr. Jon Sharp, who led the work at the University of Washington Cooperative Institute for Climate Ocean and Ecosystem Studies and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.

Read the full article at ECO

New protections for the Rice’s Whale in the Gulf of Mexico delayed until December

August 29, 2024 — The Gulf of Mexico is haunted by a ghost. The animal is as big as a school bus, but glides unseen through the ocean’s twilight zone, its low moans echoing in the dim water. A creature so elusive, researchers can spend days searching without ever glimpsing one.

This is the Rice’s whale, one of the Gulf of Mexico’s largest and most mysterious animals. Found nowhere else on Earth, it is the only baleen whale that lives in the Gulf year-round.

Previously thought to be a sub-species of the Bryde’s whale, the Rice’s whale was only declared a unique species in 2021. Yet experts fear it could disappear before people ever get to know it. NOAA Fisheries researchers estimate that fewer than 100 Rice’s whales remain in the Gulf, with recent counts putting that number as low as 50.

“Our scientists have not been seeing many calves when they do surveys for Rice’s whales, which is obviously problematic,” NOAA Fisheries Southeast Large Whale Recovery Coordinator Clay George said.

NOAA Fisheries was to publish a new critical habitat designation for the species this week under a settlement agreement with environmental organizations to better protect the endangered whale. But the parties have agreed to extend the deadline to no later than Dec. 2

Read the full article at WUFT

Feds say finishing Vineyard Wind won’t seriously harm whales — but sea turtle deaths expected

August 28, 2024 — The federal government expects no endangered whales, including North Atlantic right whales, to be killed or seriously injured by the installation of Vineyard Wind’s remaining turbines, but the same is not true for sea turtles.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, has issued a new biological opinion on ways the continued turbine installation could affect threatened and endangered species.

The opinion won’t be published for several days, but in a summary provided to CAI, Greater Atlantic regional spokeswoman Andrea Gomez said the agency anticipates that an average of one sea turtle per year will be struck and killed by a boat associated with Vineyard Wind.

Read the full article at CAI

NOAA study links massive Bering Sea snow crab loss to climate change

August 23, 2024 — Scientists had previously linked the crash of the Bering Sea snow crab population in recent years to warming ocean waters. But a new study released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deepens the connection between human-caused climate change and the die-off.

Snow crabs are well suited for Arctic conditions. But Mike Litzow — the lead author of the report, which was published in the journal “Nature Climate Change” — said the southeastern Bering Sea is changing to more sub-Arctic conditions through a process called borealization. St. Matthew Island to the south, nothing north of 60 degrees’ latitude is included in the southeastern Bering Sea. It’s a process that’s also happening in terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska.

Read the full article at KMXT

Judge orders feds to protect endangered whale from oil drilling

August 22, 2024 — Marine species advocates scored a long-awaited legal victory this week, after a judge found the federal government had underestimated the risks of offshore oil and gas development to the critically endangered Rice’s whale and other wildlife.

On Monday, a federal district court in Maryland tossed out NOAA Fisheries’ Trump-era assessment — known as a biological opinion, or BiOp — effective Dec. 20, forcing the federal government to develop a new plan for protecting marine life like Gulf sturgeon and sea turtles.

Read the full article at E&E News