June 20, 2024 — NOAA scientists are predicting the Gulf of Mexico’s fish-killing dead zone will be larger than average this summer.
The dead zone is a hypoxic area roughly the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut with low oxygen levels that can kill off tens of thousands of fish. Caused by excess nutrient pollution from human activity along the Mississippi-Atchafalaya watershed, the dead zone affects fish every summer.
June 20, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries is now accepting public comments on its updated ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) roadmap.
NOAA first established an EBFM roadmap in 2016 to provide guidance on the agency’s policy shift toward implementing ecosystem-level planning for the country’s fisheries. The management style involves setting quotas while also considering how an individual species fits into the wider ecosystem, rather than the status of an individual stock.
June 19, 2024 — Four species of sea turtles—Kemp’s ridley, loggerhead, green, and leatherback—are seasonal residents of New England. They arrive in May and June, feeding in our coastal waters through the summer and early fall. When temperatures drop in mid-fall, these reptiles need to migrate south into warmer waters for the winter. However, sometimes their migration is affected by geographic barriers: The hook shape of Cape Cod can trap them within Cape Cod Bay for weeks to months. This puts turtles at risk of being exposed to waters that are too cold for them.
Since they are cold-blooded, sea turtles’ body temperatures mirror those of surrounding waters. When turtles have a low body temperature, they stop feeding; their body systems slow down; their immune systems become suppressed. This is all part of a condition called cold stunning. When cold-stunned turtles wash up on local beaches, they need immediate rescue or they will not survive. Luckily,the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network collects sick, injured, and cold-stunned turtles from beaches and brings them to rehabilitation facilities for medical care.
In Massachusetts, Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary rescues cold-stunned sea turtles off Cape Cod beaches. They bring live turtles to two Massachusetts rehabilitation facilities: the New England Aquarium and the National Marine Life Center. There, turtles are slowly warmed up, given medical care, reintroduced to swimming and feeding, and stabilized. It can take weeks to months for these debilitated turtles to be healthy enough to be released again into the ocean.
June 19, 2024 — Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Friday that shells of the invasive European green crab were spotted along the shores of Bostwick Inlet on Gravina Island near Ketchikan.
European green crabs have the potential to wreak havoc on commercial and subsistence fisheries in Alaska — the crabs are highly competitive and very hungry. They eat clams, oysters, scallops, other crabs and are known to rip up seagrass in their search for food. Fish and Game said that as a result, they can displace local crab populations like the Dungeness crabs in Bostwick Inlet. They can also decimate eelgrass and saltmarsh habitats, disrupt ecosystem balance, and cheapen overall intertidal biodiversity.
According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, they have even been reported in British Columbia eating juvenile salmon. The International Union for Conservation and Nature ranks them as one of the top 100 worst invasive species in the world.
June 17, 2024 — Federal fisheries officials combatting illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries are working to expand partnerships to perform intelligence-led investigations to target future suspected violations, while facilitating the flow of legal seafood into U.S. commerce.
All this and more is included in this latest Report on the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) delivered to Congress, NOAA officials said on May 31. The report offers an overview summary of seafood imports subject to SIMP and enforcement action associated with SIMP imports.
A second report discusses efforts of the Maritime Security and Fisheries Enforcement (SAFE) Act’s Interagency Working Group to investigate and prosecute groups and individuals engaging in IUU fishing.
June 17, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries is finalizing documents that will serve as a response to a lawsuit that resulted in the near-cancellation of Southeast Alaska’s commercial Chinook salmon fishery in Southeast Alaska in 2023.
The announcement is the latest development in an ongoing lawsuit between environmental group Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) and the U.S. government. WFC sued NOAA Fisheries in 2020, claiming that the commercial Chinook salmon harvest and government-funded hatchery programs were taking prey needed by Southern Resident killer whales, starving them in the process. In 2021, a district court ruled in favor of WFC, finding flaws in the official documentation and that analysis was needed to allow commercial fishing operations.
June 14, 2024 — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have released the final management plan for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, outlining a fifteen-year vision for the 3.1-million-acre sanctuary 130 miles off Cape Cod.
Hosting dozens of deep-sea corals and a plethora of endangered species, such as right and sei whales, the sanctuary was originally designated as the first of its kind in the Atlantic by former President Barack Obama in 2016, opening a lengthy and at-times contentious debate on the appropriate regulatory governance of the Monument.
During Obama’s, Trump’s, and Biden’s presidencies, each Administration was sued by commercial fishing or conservation interests over each administration’s support or opposition to large-scale fishing in the area.
According to the new mandate, the sanctuary will now be managed toward conserving its marine ecosystems while prohibiting commercial fishing and oil drilling, establishing proper staffing in collaboration with conservation partners, and conducting research and exploration of the Monument’s creatures and ecosystems, of which an estimated 50% of species remain undiscovered.
June 14, 2024 — The Council for the Conservation of Migratory Birds has presented NOAA Fisheries with the 2023 Presidential Migratory Bird Federal Stewardship Award. Each year, the Council recognizes projects or actions with a focus on migratory birds that are conducted by or in partnership with a federal agency. NOAA Fisheries won the 2023 award for its project Seabird Conservation Through Fishery-Based Data: The NOAA Fisheries-Oikonos Seabird Bycatch Project. The project aims to maximize the scientific value of birds taken incidentally in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.
While NOAA Fisheries works diligently to minimize and mitigate bycatch in federally managed fisheries, seabirds are sometimes incidentally taken. Since 2007, NOAA Fisheries has been collaborating with Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge to gather data from seabird bycatch by conducting necropsies on carcasses instead of disposing of them. At-sea observers collect carcasses and send them to the researchers at Oikonos for data collection. Participating programs include:
June 13, 2024 — A recent survey flight of whales off the coast of Massachusetts reported more than 160 “dazzling” sightings of seven different species, including orcas.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries division said researchers reported 161 whale sightings in total on the May 25 flight south of Martha’s Vineyard and southeast of Nantucket, including a rare killer whale sighting. They shared photos from the survey on Monday.
“I was in the front left bubble window of our plane, so I had a pretty good view of what was going on,” said NOAA Marine Mammal Observer Alison Ogilvie. “We were pretty excited the whole time. There was a lot of shouting and gasps from both sides of the plane. There was so much action.”
“It is not unusual that there are a lot of whales in the area this time of year,” NOAA spokesperson Teri Friady said. “But since we do not survey every day, or in the same areas every time we fly, catching such a large aggregation with such a variety of species on one of our flights is the exception rather than the rule.”
There were 93 sightings of endangered sei whales – one of the highest ever seen during a single survey flight. Also spotted were about three dozen humpback whales, fin whales, sperm whales and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.
Two of the right whales were breeding females. Ogilvie says there are currently only 70 breeding females in the population.
June 13, 2024 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Today, NOAA Fisheries announced the final rule and decision to grant the Makah Tribe a waiver from the take prohibitions in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). This waiver provides for a limited subsistence and ceremonial hunt of Eastern North Pacific gray whales in accordance with the Treaty of Neah Bay of 1855 and quotas established by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). This waiver authorizes the Makah Tribe to resume hunting up to 25 Eastern North Pacific gray whales over a 10-year period in U.S. waters.
Prior to a hunt, NOAA Fisheries and the Tribe must enter into a cooperative agreement under the Whaling Convention Act, and the Tribe must apply for and receive a hunt permit. The final rule includes time and area restrictions, harvest limits, low population thresholds, restrictions on the use of gray whale parts and reporting and monitoring requirements.
“This final rule represents a major milestone in the process to return ceremonial and subsistence hunting of Eastern North Pacific gray whales to the Makah Tribe,” said Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries. “The measures adopted today honor the Makah Tribe’s treaty rights and their cultural whaling tradition that dates back well over 1,000 years, and is fundamental to their identity and heritage.”
Under this final rule, there will be no change to the number of Eastern North Pacific gray whales that can be hunted under a quota first established by the IWC in 1997. The IWC quota is shared between the Makah Tribe and the Chukotkan Natives in Russia. This action will allow the Makah Tribe to use the quota which has in past years been transferred to Russia. No more than 2-3 whales may be hunted each year by the Tribe in U.S. waters. In addition, NOAA Fisheries will maintain adaptive management strategies to ensure the protection of endangered Western North Pacific gray whales and the Pacific Coast Feeding Group of Eastern North Pacific gray whales.
Earlier this year, NOAA Fisheries closed the Unusual Mortality Event for the Eastern North Pacific gray whale population, which included 690 gray whale strandings from December 17, 2018 to November 9, 2023, with peak strandings from December 2018 to December 2020. The most recent gray whale population estimate, based on counts of southbound whales during the winter of 2023/2024, is approximately 17,400 to 21,300 whales.
Historical Background
On February 14, 2005, NOAA Fisheries received a request from the Makah Tribe for a limited waiver of the MMPA moratorium on take of Eastern North Pacific gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus). The Tribe requested that NOAA Fisheries authorize a Tribal hunt in the coastal portion of the Tribe’s usual and accustomed fishing area for ceremonial and subsistence purposes, in addition to authorizing the making and sale of handicrafts created from the harvested whales.
On April 5, 2019, NOAA Fisheries published a proposed rule to issue a waiver under the MMPA and proposed regulations governing the hunting of Eastern North Pacific gray whales by the Makah Tribe for a 10-year period. At this time, the agency also published a related notice of hearing before an administrative law judge to consider the waiver and proposed regulations. In November 2019, a public hearing led by an administrative law judge took place in Seattle, Washington.
On September 23, 2021, the judge’s recommended decision was transmitted to NOAA Fisheries along with the hearing transcript and other required documentation. These documents — and public comments on them — informed the agency’s final decision on the Makah Tribe’s waiver request.
More information about the Makah Tribe’s request for a limited waiver of the Marine Mammal Protection Act moratorium on take of gray whales — including a flowchart — is available on the NOAA Fisheries’ website as well as a historical chronology leading up to this milestone.