NOAA Archives - Page 479 of 523

Fishing lines threaten whales, but help is possible

September 20, 2016 — Humpback whales off New Jersey’s coast, like the young male that washed up dead Friday on a Sea Isle City beach, were taken off the federal endangered species list this month because of rebounding numbers.

The animals may have gotten entangled, then disentangled, but might have starved to death because of infection or another totally unrelated disease, Gouveia said.

Commercial fishermen are doing what they can to prevent such interactions, said Greg DiDomenico of the Garden State Sea Food Association in Cape May, who is part of the NOAA task force that devises the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan.

“These are things no one wants to see happen,” said DiDomenico of entanglements. “It’s never intentional, but still it makes you feel bad.”

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

ABTA: Atlantic Marine Monument Says U.S. Doesn’t Support Its Own Sustainable Fisheries

September 15, 2016 — The following was released today by the American Bluefin Tuna Association, in response to President Obama’s decision to designate a new Marine National Monument off the coast of Cape Cod:

The American Bluefin Tuna Association (ABTA) represents 27,000 commercial, charter/headboat and recreational fishermen who fish for Bigeye, Yellowfin, Bluefin and Albacore tuna. ABTA is deeply saddened to hear of President Obama’s decision today to designate a marine monument in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts. All of the aforementioned fish species are found and fished by our fishermen within the newly designated monument.

ABTA’s fishermen have the distinction of employing the most sustainable fishing methods of any oceanic fishery in the U.S. ABTA’s commercial fishery is the U.S.’s only artisanal fishery, as defined by the United Nations Fish and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) and by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). ABTA fishermen catch one fish at a time, using handgear, with negligible bycatch and its commercial fishermen have the highest record of compliance with fishery regulations of any such fishery in the world.

ABTA’s takeaway from the Administration’s decision to designate an Atlantic marine monument:

This decision sends a message to the world that the U.S. does not support its own sustainable fisheries; that the U.S. is more interested in promoting the concept of marine protected areas internationally than it is in protecting its own fishing economy and food supply. Implicit in this action is the message that the U.S. does not trust the body of law that we have created and the democratic institutions we have empowered to enact that law in the stewardship of our oceans.

This decision will most definitely result in the U.S. having greater difficulty in utilizing its fishing quota, as set by ICCAT, for certain species fished in this region; in particular, swordfish. There is a very real threat that the U.S. will have to surrender some or all of its unutilized swordfish quota to another ICCAT-member country who may not maintain sustainable fishing practices. This decision will also result in an unnecessary increase in fish imports.

The proposed prohibition on all forms of fishing in the monument is simply punitive and completely unnecessary. The Canyons and Seamounts region is in very deep water, from 1,500 to 15,000 ft in depth. Much of the fishing in this region uses surface and sub-surface fishing gear, sustainable fishing methods in which the fishing gear never comes into contact with deep sea coral found on the sea floor. Prohibiting these forms of fishing is tantamount to prohibiting commercial airline flights over Yellowstone National Park for fear that trees will be knocked down.

The notion that creating a marine monument will contribute to the sustainability of the marine species found there is a myth. All of the marine species harvested in this region are from healthy fish stocks and are sustainably managed by NOAA. Most of the marine species that are harvested in this region are highly migratory, highly fecund pelagic species whose habitat is the entirety of the tropical, sub-tropical and temperate regions of the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent seas. These species do not preferentially inhabit this region for long periods of time. They swim in and out of the region constantly during certain months and migrate to the east Atlantic, West Africa or the east coast of South America regularly.

A negative message

Abandoning the open, democratic and thoroughly science-based process by which we undertake to establish protections for important marine attributes in favor of a monument established by executive fiat sends a negative message to those U.S. fishermen and shoreside industries who would needlessly pay for this monument by loss of income. It also sends a negative message to the majority of our fishermen who are committed to adhering to the processes and respect for regulation promulgated in accordance with the Magnuson Stevens Act. The decision is a clear denouncement of the democratic institutions that are charged with safeguarding the public interest as it pertains to oceanic marine matters. U.S. fisheries, in particular those fisheries that are found in the proposed area, are already the most highly regulated such fisheries in the world.

Absent strong, verifiable scientific support for such an action, creating a marine monument based upon vague and unsupported concerns “for the future”, can be likened to such expressions as “better safe than sorry” or “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. These are fairly vacuous guidelines for safeguarding the environment and for public policy in general.

David Schalit, Vice President

American Bluefin Tuna Association

MASSACHUSETTS: Bluefin tuna seized for size violation donated to homeless shelter

September 14, 2016 — A bluefin tuna was donated to a local homeless shelter after it was seized for a size violation during a routine inspection on Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the Massachusetts Environmental Police said in a Facebook post.

Police were inspecting a fleet of more than 100 tuna ships on the sanctuary Tuesday when officers located a vessel with a 55-inch bluefin tuna onboard, according to police.

The fish was about 18 inches under the required size limit for the ship’s fishing permit category, police said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) asked that officers seize the tuna because of the violation.

Police transported the fish to Boston, where a NOAA officer took possession of it, according to police. The tuna was then donated to a homeless shelter in the area.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Will Obama fence off more of the ocean? US fishermen are fearful

September 13, 2016 — American fishermen are deeply fearful that the Obama White House could cut them off as early as this week from major fishing areas of the U.S. continental shelf on both coasts, further restricting one of the most highly regulated fishing industries in the world.

At stake are millions of dollars in fishing revenue and hundreds of jobs — and in some parts of the country, the survival of an embattled way of life that has persisted for centuries but is facing environmentalist pressures unlike anything before — and without the chance for hearings and legislative back-and-forth that U.S. laws normally require.

“This totally affects us, but we don’t know what’s going on,” one fishing boat owner, who asked to remain anonymous, told Fox News. “We are just out of the loop. No one even wants to say what effect it will have.”

“They are throwing all fishermen under the bus, along with their supporting industries” declared Marty Scanlon, a fishing boat owner and member of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries advisory panel on highly migratory fish species in the Atlantic. “They’ve done everything they can to put us out of business.”

What the fishermen fear most is the kind of unilateral action by the White House that they have already seen elsewhere. As part of their ongoing environmental ambitions, the Obama administration’s Council on Environmental Quality, and the president himself, are aggressively interested in creating preservation zones that would ban fishing and other activities within large portions of the 200-mile U.S. “exclusive economic zone” of maritime influence, and just as interested in getting other nations to do so, in their own as well as international waters.

That aim, supported by many important environmental groups, is cited as urgently required for protection against diminishing biodiversity, overfishing and damage to coral and unique underwater geological features — not to mention the fact that with only a few months remaining in his term, the president sees such sweeping gestures as part of his legacy of achievements, and as the boat owner put it, “the window is narrowing” for the administration to act.

As one result, pressure from lobbying campaigns both for and against new declarations of such no-go zones both along the U.S. northeastern Atlantic coast and the coast of California have been mounting.

So has, apparently, behind-the-scenes maneuvering to get influential Democratic legislators to support such new preservation areas publicly — a tough call, since the affected fishermen are also constituents. So far, many of the Democrats are keeping a low profile.

Read the full story at Fox News

CHRISTIAN PUTNAM: Balancing good news with bad

September 13, 2016 — Due to budgetary constraints and other factors, in recent years the federal surveys of fish stocks have been reduced and carried out by a single vessel, the Fisheries Survey Vessel (FSV) Henry B. Bigelow. The way a survey is done is like regular commercial fishing in that the survey vessel tows gear similar to commercial fishing gear in order to determine how many fish are in the area and what species. The reduced surveys and limited areas surveyed have been the subject of considerable criticism by the commercial fishing industry and local politicians.

Taking a page from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts fisheries regulators, last month NOAA Fisheries announced the agency is looking for one to three trawler-type fishing vessels to handle “part or all” of the spring and fall surveys for the next five years.

NOAA Fisheries states this action is to get more consistent and expansive results from the surveys. Perhaps this will avoid recurrence of the disastrous quota reductions, such as the nearly 90 percent reduction in cod quota over the past couple years. This action also shows that NOAA Fisheries is beginning to listen to the criticism of the stakeholders that suffer the results of their decisions and wishes to build some trust in the science and processes used to make quota decisions.

It also makes sense to allow the under-utilized fishing fleet to operate for these purposes so that the fishermen can create revenue through survey research, as they are not able to fish on a consistent basis these days. It is encouraging to see what appears to be a change toward better policy and perhaps a more rational approach to gathering the information needed to make important decisions about the natural resources that belong to the public and are relied up by many of our neighbors to make a living.

Read the full story from the Scituate Mariner

Northern Pacific Fishery Management Council 40th Anniversary Celebration

September 12, 2016 — The following was released by the Northern Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will be celebrating 40 years of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act on Thursday, December 8, 2016 at the Captain Cook Hotel from 6 to 10 pm. Seating is limited. Registration opens October 10. More information will follow at the October Council meeting.

Feds take most humpback whales off endangered species list

September 7, 2016 — HONOLULU — Federal authorities took most humpback whales off the endangered species list Tuesday, saying their numbers have recovered through international efforts to protect the giant mammals.

Known for their acrobatic leaps from the sea and complex singing patterns, humpback whales were nearly hunted to extinction for their oil and meat by industrial-sized whaling ships well through the middle of the 20th century. But the species has been bouncing back since an international ban on commercial whaling took effect in 1966.

The moratorium on whaling remains in effect, despite the new classifications.

The National Marine Fisheries Service said it first had evidence to indicate there were 14 distinct populations of humpback whales around the world. It then said nine of these populations have recovered to the point where they no longer need Endangered Species Act Protections. These include whales that winter in Hawaii, the West Indies and Australia.

Before, the agency classified all humpback whales as one population. They had been listed as endangered since 1970.

“Today’s news is a true ecological success story,” Eileen Sobeck, assistant administrator for fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

NOAA ship back after extensive trip

September 6, 2016 — NEWPORT, RI — Research scientists recently had the first confirmed sighting of a True’s beaked whale that was combined with a verified recording of the whale’s sounds.

“The whales are very far offshore and can spend one to three hours below the surface without coming up,” said Debra Palka, a research biologist with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass. “The whales are not seen very often.”

Palka was among a team of scientists that just completed a 54-day trip at sea aboard the 209-foot National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel Henry B. Bigelow, which was welcomed back home Friday at a ceremony that featured U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Rear Adm. Anita Lopez, deputy director for operations in NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations; and Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Taylor, Bigelow’s commanding officer, as the speakers.

Reed announced in April that Bigelow’s new home port would be Newport, moving here permanently from Woods Hole. He lobbied for several years to have the ship here because the waterfront at Naval Station Newport is an integral part of operations for both NOAA and Coast Guard vessels, he said.

Read the full story at The Westerly Sun

Bottom trawlers sought for NOAA surveys

September 2, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries is looking for a few good boats.

The federal fishing regulator’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole seeks one to three commercial fishing boats to participate in the agency’s bottom trawl survey in the waters of the mid-Atlantic and New England regions of the Atlantic Ocean.

The use of the commercial vessels to help supplement — or in some cases, supplant — the work of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s survey vessel, the FSV Henry B. Bigelow, is one of the first steps in NOAA’s recently announced plan to incorporate more commercial boats in the trawl survey.

NOAA announced on Aug. 3 that it plans to shift “part or all” of its spring and fall trawl surveys to fishing industry boats over the next five years in an attempt to get more consistent and expansive coverage and to bridge the current gap between what fishermen say they are seeing on the water and what NOAA is reporting from its trawl surveys.

“The goal is to build trust in the best science through cooperative and collaborative research and improving both the communication and transparency with the fishing industry,” Bill Karp, the director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said at the announcement.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

NPFMC October 2016 Agenda

September 2, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA:

The Council meets the week of October 3, 2016 at the Hilton Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska.

The AGENDA and SCHEDULE are now available. Alaska Airlines offers Travel Discounts to the meetings. Documents will be posted through the links on the Agenda. The deadline for public comments is 5:00 PM (AST) Tuesday, September 27, 2016.

Submit comments to npfmc.comments@noaa.gov