Saving Seafood

HAWAII: Papahānaumokuākea Expansion Public Meetings

July 20, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA:

Please join the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for a public meeting to discuss the proposed expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

On June 16, 2016, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz submitted a proposal to President Obama, requesting consideration of expanding the current boundaries of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument – drawing attention again to the rich cultural and scientific resources of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI).

As the Administration evaluates the proposal, we are seeking input from all interested parties to ensure that any expansion of the Monument protects the unique features of the NWHI for future generations while recognizing the importance of sustainable ocean-based economies. Please join us at our listening session to share your comments, concerns, and visions regarding the proposed expansion.

Oahu:
Monday, August 1, 2016
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Filipino Community Center
94-428 Mokuola Street, Suite 302
Waipahu, HI 96797		 Kauai:
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Kauai Community College
Performing Arts Center
3-1901 Kaumualii Hwy
Lihue, HI 96766

Written comments will be accepted in person during the public meetings and may also be submitted, in person, August 1 and 2 at the following locations during normal business hours:

Oʻahu
Honolulu Services Center
Pier 38, Honolulu Harbor
1139 N. Nimitz Hwy, Suite 220
Honolulu, HI 96817		 Maui
Sanctuary Visitor Center
726 South Kihei Road
Kihei, HI 96753		 Hawaiʻi
Mokupāpapa Discovery Center
76 Kamehameha Ave
Hilo, HI 96720

We hope you are able to join us and ask that you RSVP at your earliest convenience by clicking HERE. This meeting is open to the public, so please feel free to share this invitation with anyone you think would be interested.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Read the release at the Papahanaumokuakea website

Navy’s submarine hunts are too disturbing for marine life, California court rules

July 20, 2016 — They came as a wave, some 150 to 200 melon-headed whales churning into Hawaii’s Hanalei Bay like a single mass. It was a strange sight for the Kauai islanders to behold. Melon-headed whales live in the deep ocean, feasting on squid. But here they were, swimming in the shallows no more than 100 feet from shore.

Over the course of July 3 and 4, 2004, volunteers and rescuers shepherded the animals back to sea, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s account of the mass stranding. The Washington Post reported at the time that it was the largest event of its kind in 150 years of Hawaiian history. Almost all the whales made it back out into the open water. But not the entire pod.

A young calf, split off from the rest of the herd, perished the next day.

A year later, 34 whales died when they were stranded at North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Three years after that and half the world away, 100 melon-headed whales were again stranded en masse, this time on the shores of Madagascar. The reasons why whales beach themselves are not always clear — strandings have been likened to car crashes in that the causes are myriad but the conclusion is never good. With the melon-headed whales, however, something was different. The events were unusual enough, and involved such large numbers, to prompt scrutiny. In both cases, a prime suspect emerged: sonar.

Controversy over these sound waves continues today. And in the latest skirmish over oceanic noise pollution, a victory went to the whales. On Friday, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the Navy violated marine mammal protection laws, reversing a lower court’s decision that allowed military vessels to use a type of loud, low-frequency sonar approved in 2012.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Meetings in Hawaii Set On Marine Monument

July 19, 2016 — It’s official. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have scheduled two public meetings next month on the proposed expansion of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

As Civil Beat reported last week, the feds want public input on U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz’ proposal to expand the monument around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands from its current 50-mile boundary out to the full 200-mile limit that’s under exclusive U.S. control.

“It’s really important for people to have an opportunity to be heard,” Schatz said in a statement Monday. “I am grateful to President Obama and his Administration for accepting my invitation to hear directly from Hawai‘i residents before making any decisions.”

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Crawling to Recovery: Loggerhead sea turtles reach a nesting milestone

July 18, 2016 — BRUNSWICK, Ga. — It’s been a record nesting season for Georgia’s loggerhead sea turtles, which last week reached a milestone in efforts to help the threatened species recover.

With 2,810 nests on Georgia barrier islands, the turtles edged past a key goal while also setting a record high since comprehensive nesting counts began in 1989.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries plan for goals for the region including Georgia and the Carolinas is a 2 percent annual nesting increase for a 50-year period. Before this season, Georgia’s 3 percent annual increase rate had the state on pace to hit its goal of 2,800 nests in 2020.

“We’ve had a number of increasing nesting years in a row, but this is kind of a big year for us,” Mark Dodd, coordinator for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Sea Turtle Program, said in a phone interview. “It’s been a long history of conservation in Georgia that culminated in this 2,800 nests number, so it’s pretty exciting for us.”

Georgia’s main nesting sea turtle, loggerheads weigh as much as 400 pounds. Female turtles crawl onto beaches from late spring into August to lay eggs in nests dug on the dry-sand beach, DNR officials say. Hatchlings begin emerging this month, crawling to the surf to begin their lives at sea.

Read the full story at the Albany Herald

NOAA to hold public meetings on proposed sanctuary expansion

July 18, 2016 — BATON ROUGE, La. — Federal wildlife and fisheries regulators have scheduled two meetings in Louisiana to get feedback on their proposal to expand the boundaries of Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will convene the public meetings on Tuesday, July 19, at the Hilton New Orleans Airport hotel in Kenner and on Thursday, July 21, at the Estuarine Habitats and Coastal Fisheries Center in Lafayette. Both meetings will be from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the LMT Online

Eileen Sobeck Comments on Essential Fish Habitat

July 15, 2016 — Fish habitat earned legal respect 20 years ago when Congress added it to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the nation’s main fisheries law. We chatted about the role of Essential Fish Habitat with Eileen Sobeck, who has led NOAA Fisheries since 2014.

Why is habitat important to the fish we catch?

Fish aren’t just sitting there in the ocean waiting to be extracted. They are living in an environment, in a habitat, just like terrestrial species. To pretend that there will always be fish out there if their habitat is destroyed or polluted or otherwise compromised would be naïve.

What does habitat mean to you?

I’ve been snorkeling on coral reefs since childhood. I’ve been lucky enough to go diving and snorkeling all across the United States and the world. Just last month in Hawaii, I managed most mornings to go snorkeling outside my hotel. You can’t help but understand the concept of habitat supporting an entire ecosystem when you see a coral reef.

Read the full story at The Fishing Wire

East Coast fishermen spar with federal government over cost of at-sea monitors

July 14, 2016 — Every year, the federal government spends millions monitoring New England commercial fishermen to ensure they ply their timeless maritime trade in accordance with the law.

Now, a judge is set to rule on who should foot the bill for the on-board monitors: the government or the fishing boat owners. The East Coast fishermen say sticking them with the bill would be the “death knell” for their  industry and is illegal on the part of the federal government.

Fishermen of important New England food species such as cod and haddock will have to start paying the cost of at-sea monitors soon under new rules. Monitors — third-party workers hired to observe fishermen’s compliance with federal regulations — collect data to help determine future fishing quotas and can cost about $18,000 a year, or $710 per voyage.

The Cause of Action Institute, a legal watchdog representing a group of East Coast fishermen, sued the federal government in December in U.S. District Court in Concord, N.H., seeking to block the transfer of payments from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the fishermen.

“It is unlawful for NOAA to force struggling fishermen to pay for their own at-sea monitors,” said former federal judge Alfred Lechner, the institute’s president and CEO. “The significant costs of these regulations should be the responsibility of the government.”

The lawsuit was filed against the Department of Commerce on behalf of David Goethel, owner and operator of F/V Ellen Diane, a 44-foot trawler based in Hampton, N.H., and Northeast Fishery Sector 13, a nonprofit representing fishermen from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

It called the transfer of payments the “death knell for much of what remains of a once-thriving ground fish industry that has been decimated by burdensome federal overreach.”

“Fishing is my passion and it’s how I’ve made a living, but right now, I’m extremely fearful that I won’t be able to do what I love and provide for my family if I’m forced to pay out of pocket for at-sea monitors,” Goethel said when the suit was filed last December.

Read the full story at Fox News

HAWAII: Longliners Have Nearly Pulled In Their 2016 Limit Of Bigeye Tuna

July 14, 2016 — Hawaii’s longline fleet is about to hit its 3,554-ton limit for bigeye tuna in the Western and Central Pacific, prompting a closure date for the fishery of July 22, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The longliners had caught an estimated 98 percent of their annual quota by Wednesday, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service reported. The feds had been predicting longliners would hit their bigeye tuna limit by Aug. 14.

But the closure will likely be short-lived thanks to a federal rule that proposes, like in years past, allowing U.S. Pacific Island territories — American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands — to each allocate up to 1,000 tons of their 2,000-ton quotas to U.S. longliners under a “specified fishing agreement.”

In April, the Hawaii Longline Association reached such an agreement with the Marianas that involves paying the territory $250,000 in each of the next three years for up to half of its quota. That’s $50,000 more than the association paid the territory last year.

The money is deposited into the Western Pacific Sustainable Fisheries Fund, which the territories use for fishery development projects approved by their respective governors, according to Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council spokeswoman Sylvia Spalding. These includes boat ramps, fish markets, processing facilities, training programs and loan programs.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Surveys off Alaska lead to new types of soft-bodied fish

July 13, 2016 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Federal biologist Jay Orr never knows what’s going to come up in nets lowered to the ocean floor off Alaska’s remote Aleutian Islands, which separate the Bering Sea from the rest of the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes it’s stuff he has to name.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist is part of a group that uses trawl nets to survey commercially important fish species such as cod in waters off Alaska. Sometimes those nets come up with things no one has seen before.

With co-authors, Orr has discovered 14 kinds of new snailfish, a creature that can be found in tide pools but also in the deepest parts of the ocean. A dozen more new snailfish are waiting to be named. Additional species are likely to be found as scientists expand their time investigating areas such as the Bering Sea Slope, in water 800 to 5,200 feet deep, or the 25,663-foot deep Aleutian Trench.

“I suspect we are just scraping the top of the distributions of some of these deep-water groups,” Orr said from his office in Seattle.

Orr and his colleagues measure the abundance of rockfish, flatfish and other “bottom fish” for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, the research arm of the NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The center studies marine resources off Alaska and parts of the West Coast.

Five boats with six researchers each surveyed Alaska waters in late June. The teams trawl on the Bering Shelf every summer and in either Aleutian waters or the Gulf of Alaska every other year.

Their findings on fish abundance are fed into models for managing fish populations.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Miami Herald

NOAA Fisheries Updates U.S. Congress on Deep Sea Coral Research

July 13, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A report to Congress submitted last month describes the 2014 and 2015 research activities on the nation’s deep-sea coral areas. The report also briefly describes progress during this period in MSA-related management actions that contribute to protecting deep-sea coral areas.

Feldwork in two regions was done during 2014-15. A survey of 31 submarine canyons between Maine and Virginia and the discovery of coral gardens just 25 miles off the coast of Maine was done by the Northeast Fieldwork Initiative.

In Alaska, images of the seafloor at more than 200 stations throughout the 1,200-mile Aleutian Islands chain were taken, confirming widespread corals and commercially important fish using the coral areas.

These initiatives tell researchers about many deep-sea coral communities that no humans had seen before. The involved scientists shared their findings and enabled the respective  management councils to act on the newest data.

NOAA’s Deep Sea Coral Research Program is a central partner for new research in the Pacific Islands region that began in 2015 and will continue until 2017. This research is also discovering deep-sea coral communities, and likely new species, in places never before surveyed.

Deep-sea corals can live for hundreds or thousands of years, creating remarkably complex communities in the depths of the oceans. Their habitat in the deep sea ranges from 150-foot depth to more than 10,000 feet.

Deep-sea coral habitats have been discovered in all U.S. regions on continental shelves and slopes, canyons, and seamounts. Their full geographic extent is still unknown, because most areas have yet to be adequately surveyed.

A few deep-sea coral species form reefs that, over millennia, can grow more than 100 meters (300 feet) tall. Many other coral species are shaped like bushes or trees and can form assemblages similar to groves or forests on the seafloor.

Nationwide, these complex structures provide habitat for many fish and invertebrate species, including certain commercially important ones such as grouper, snapper, sea bass, rockfish, shrimp, and crab.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.