Saving Seafood

NOAA extends deadline for nations seeking to validate marine mammal bycatch criteria

February 17, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries extended the deadline to evaluate applications from nations seeking to prove their fishing practices meet U.S. standards for marine mammal bycatch.

Nations wishing to send wild-caught seafood products to the U.S. need a comparability finding for commercial fishing operations. Provisions contained within the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) require fisheries outside the U.S. to meet the U.S. standards on conserving marine mammals.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

 

2 more whales found dead along Atlantic Coast. NOAA says they were likely hit by boats.

February 16, 2023 — Necropsies on two whales found dead along the Atlantic coast this week revealed that both marine mammals showed evidence of vessel strikes.

Both whales, a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and a humpback, were already beginning to decompose, but preliminary results show internal injuries consistent with the blunt force trauma of a vessel strike, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday.

The deaths are among a flurry of 21 whale deaths along the length of the Atlantic coast since Dec. 3.

While several politicians who previously expressed opposition to — or concerns about — offshore wind energy projects have called for a moratorium on wind activities and an investigation into the whale deaths, preliminary exams show at least five of the 21 whales were likely killed in vessel collisions. Several were too decomposed to be examined.

Read the full article at USA Today

Third dead whale found miles from offshore wind farm in less than a week

February 15, 2023 — The third dead whale was discovered in less than a week off the southeastern coast of Virginia, miles from Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW), one of two operational wind farms in federal waters.

Over the weekend, a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale was discovered washed ashore near Chic’s Beach which is located in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed to Fox News Digital on Monday. According to local news outlets, there was no immediate cause of death and the whale didn’t appear to have any entanglement marks.

The discovery of the beached right whale came just two days after a humpback whale was found dead along the shoreline in Cape Charles, Virginia, and five days after a dead humpback whale was found off the coast of First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach.

“There have been 3 large whale strandings in VA over the past week, two humpbacks and more recently a North Atlantic right whale,” NOAA spokesperson Allison Ferreira told Fox News Digital in an email. “We are investigating all of these incidents in collaboration with our stranding network partners.”

Read the full article at Fox News

Public helps NOAA track turtles around Maui

February 14, 2023 — A turtle known as MA100 has commonly been seen around Kaanapali since 2021. Another known as MA101 is commonly seen around Kihei but was first sighted at Maalaea Bay in 2021.

They’re among the many honu that scientists have been able to track around Maui thanks to the help of citizen scientists who report sightings of the Hawaiian green sea turtles based on special etchings on their shell.

The data collected through the citizen science-driven Honu County project helps staff with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries better understand foraging habitats, migration, distribution and the survival status of particular honu across Hawaii.

NOAA recently launched a new online tool to make it easier for folks in the Maui community and statewide to report sightings.

Since the inception of the Honu Count in 2017, nearly 600 people reported 688 sightings of 253 individual turtles. It’s a way for the public to engage in sea turtle research and conservation, according to NOAA.

Read the full article at Maui News

Wind energy gets scrutiny following whale deaths

February 10, 2023 — Politicians, citizens and some environmentalists are calling for a slow-down or complete halt of wind energy activity off the East Coast as officials examine the cause of a rash of marine animal deaths, but neither action nor an answer appears to be imminent.

In January, the debate landed on the shores of Worcester County with the body of a humpback whale, which immediately led to speculation regarding the cause of its death.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is examining samples taken from the whale, but representative Allison Ferreira said that it will take “weeks to months” to receive the necropsy report.

“Given that necropsy reports provide a comprehensive account of the stranding event, ranging from a description of external observations and internal examination findings to the diagnostic results of samples taken, they can take several weeks to months to complete and finalize,” Ferreira said in an email.

A few days later, Ferreira added that preliminary findings from the necropsy indicate vessel strike as the cause of death.

“But we do not know (definitively) if it was struck before or after death,” she said. “Results from samples taken from the whale may help inform this, but we may never know.”

Read the full article at Ocean City Today

NOAA Testing Ropeless Lobster Fishing Gear

February 10, 2023 — Ropeless lobster fishing gear is being tested by federal officials off the coast of Massachusetts.

NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center has partnered with dozens of commercial lobster fishing boats permitted by the government to assess the ropeless gear, which is also referred to as on-demand gear

The testing will take place in federal zones that are typically not open to fishing with vertical lines. Inspections are also being conducted off of Rhode Island.

Read the full article at CapeCod.com

Zooplankton Research Reveals a Glimpse of the Potential Future Northern Bering Sea Ecosystem

February 10, 2023 — The following was released SeafoodSource:

From fish to whales, nearly every predator in the sea eats zooplankton, or eats something that does. Understanding how climate impacts zooplankton can help us predict ecosystem changes to build resilient, climate-ready fisheries and communities.

A new collaborative NOAA Fisheries study looked at northern Bering Sea zooplankton over 17 years (2002–2018) of both cold conditions and unprecedented heat. The research revealed that loss of sea ice resulted in dramatic shifts. Large, high-fat copepods that are important food for many predators dwindled, while small zooplankton expanded in both number and range. This altered prey field may have contributed to ecosystem-wide impacts on fish, seabirds, and marine mammals.

“Zooplankton are near the base of the marine food web. If the base changes, we will see changes higher in the foodweb. There will be species that respond better than others,” said study lead Dave Kimmel, NOAA Fisheries, Alaska Fisheries Science Center EcoFOCI program. “By studying zooplankton we can see what the future ecosystem might look like. That knowledge can help people who make a living on it, or manage it, adapt and prepare.”

Read the full release here

NOAA introduces new electronic monitoring tablets to increase observer data accuracy

February 10, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries observers on the U.S. West Coast are moving to the use of tablet-based electronic systems to gather data on fishing vessels, replacing the outmoded pencil-and-paper system previously used.

Two of these systems are the ORCA 1 and 2 systems used by the West Coast Regional Observer Program and OPTECS system used by the West Coast Groundfish Observer Program.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Alaska’s Bering Sea crab crisis is a sign of big changes in the future, scientists warn

February 9, 2023 — The first-ever cancellation of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab harvest was unprecedented and a shock to the state’s fishing industry and the communities dependent on it.

Unfortunately for that industry and those communities, those conditions are likely to be common in the future, according to several scientists who made presentations at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium held in late January.

The conditions that triggered the crash were likely warmer than any extreme possible during the preindustrial period but now can be expected in about one of every seven years, said Mike Litzow, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric scientist based in Kodiak. By the 2040s, those conditions can be expected to occur one out of every three years, he said.

Blame “borealization” for the disaster befalling snow crab, which is an Arctic species, Litzow said. That term refers to an ecosystem becoming boreal, with groups of organisms – called “taxa” by scientists – that have been south of the Arctic until recently.

“If we think about an Arctic animal at the southern edge of its range that’s exposed to really rapid warming, that leads us sort of inevitably to the concept of borealization,” said Litzow, director of NOAA Fisheries Kodiak laboratory and shellfish assessment program. “As you warm Arctic ecosystems, those systems become prone to a state change, where Arctic taxa such as snow crab become replaced by subarctic taxa that are better able to tolerate ice-free and warm conditions.”

Snow crab are dependent on the winter sea ice and the cold conditions created even after the seasonal melt, he said. While they are widely dispersed through the Bering Sea, the sweet spot for the commercial harvest – the place where the crab are big enough to be commercially valuable – is in the southeastern Bering Sea.

Read the full article at Arctic Today

Gulf of Mexico has warmed at twice rate of global oceans

February 7, 2023 –A new study says sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have warmed about twice as much as global ocean waters since 1970.

Those findings indicate the Gulf of Mexico may be one more U.S. region where higher sea surface temperatures are outpacing global averages. Another is the Gulf of Maine, where the rate has been nearly triple of the world’s other oceans since the early 1980s.

The latest research comes from a joint effort between scientists at the National Centers for Environmental Information and the Northern Gulf Institute (NGI), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Cooperative Institute.  It quantifies the warming trend in the Gulf of Mexico’s ocean heat content over the past 50 years.

The study, published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, shows that waters closest to the surface in the Gulf of Mexico have increased at a rate approximately twice that of the global ocean in the decades between 1970 and 2020.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman