Saving Seafood

New drive to reduce lobster fishing gear to help rare whale

February 7, 2019 — Interstate fishing managers are starting the process of trying to reduce the amount of lobster fishing gear off the East Coast in an attempt to help save a declining species of rare whale.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission announced on Wednesday that it would consider options designed to reduce vertical lobster fishing lines in the water by as much as 40 percent. The lines pose a threat to the North Atlantic right whale, which is one of the rarest marine mammals in the world.

The commission said it would try to reduce the amount of gear with a combination of trap limits, seasonal closures, changes to gear configuration and other methods. The rules are under development and it will take months before they come up for public hearings.

The commission said in a statement that the drive to reduce lines in the water is “in response to concerns about the North Atlantic right whale population and the potential impacts of whale conservation measures on the conduct of the lobster fishery.” But some lobster fishermen said they need more details about the effort before they will get on board.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the San Francisco Chronicle

Reports of Right Whale Calves Give Researchers Hope

January 23, 2019 — Local North Atlantic Right Whale researchers are hearing some good news from their colleagues off the southeastern coast of the United States.

A third right whale calf was recently spotted during the current birthing season in waters off Florida.

The critically endangered species has an estimated population just over 400.

Center for Coastal Studies Researcher Charles “Stormy” Mayo said the three births are excellent news but female right whales need to reproduce more.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MAINE: Whale rule changes coming on two tracks

January 9, 2019 — Maine lobstermen and their representatives, along with state fisheries regulators, continue in the trenches of debates about how much the Maine lobster fishery is implicated in the decline of the North Atlantic right whale.

Ongoing efforts to protect the whales from entanglement with fishing gear may result in two different new sets of regulations, Sarah Cotnoir, resource coordinator for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, and Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, told the Zone B Council last week.

The two sets of regulations come from parallel processes under two federal laws, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Reduced speed zone to protect whale in effect to December

November 20, 2018 — NANTUCKET, Mass. — The federal government is asking mariners to slow down off of Massachusetts to help protect a severely endangered species of large whale.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it’s applying the voluntary vessel speed restriction zone in an area 21 nautical miles south of Nantucket. The designation is intended to protect a group of four North Atlantic right whales seen in the area on Sunday.

NOAA says the speed restriction zone will be in effect until Dec. 3. Mariners are asked to avoid the area or go through it at 10 knots or less.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

Wildlife NGOs urge Canadian gov’t to expand right whale protection

November 5, 2018 — Wildlife protection groups, led by the Centre for Biological Diversity (CBD), have submitted recommendations to the Canadian government urging them to uphold and expand the existing protections for the North Atlantic right whale, a press release said.

The measures put in place this year to outlaw forms of entanglement fishing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence followed the news that 12 right whales had died in Canadian waters in 2017. The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) responded by closing key fishing areas in the gulf, including the entanglement-prone snow crab fishery.

Aside from the recommendation to expand the protected area, the letter also requested that all Atlantic Canadian fisheries have marked equipment, enabling the owners of entanglement gear to be identified; and make the transition from trap/pot fisheries to ropeless gear.

“The right whale population is plummeting as these incredible animals continue to get entangled in Canadian and US fishing gear,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the CBD.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News 

 

Lobster industry blasts proposed regulations intended to protect whales

October 5, 2018 — Maine officials and members of the state’s lobster industry are blasting a new federal report on the endangered right whale, claiming it uses old science to unfairly target the fishery for restrictions.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources, the agency that regulates the $434 million lobster fishery, and the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the trade group representing Maine’s 4,500 active commercial lobstermen, question the scientific merits of the report from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which was issued in advance of next week’s meeting of a federal right whale protection advisory team.

“They’re painting a big target on the back of the Maine lobster industry, but the picture isn’t based on the best available science,” DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said Thursday. “If we use the wrong starting point, and that’s what this report is, the wrong starting point, what kind of regulations will we end up with? Ones that could end up hurting the lobster industry for no reason and won’t do much to help the right whales. That is unfair.”

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

 

Legislators act to save right whales

June 14, 2018 — A $5 million annual grant program is proposed for fishermen, shippers and conservationists to collaborate to protect North Atlantic right whales but the state’s lobstermen are still considering it.

“We’ve read it,” Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association Executive Director Beth Casoni said of the SAVE Right Whales Act of 2018, filed in Congress June 7. “We have not had a chance to discuss it as an organization.” At a regularly scheduled monthly meeting Wednesday, the association’s elected delegates are expected to discuss and possibly determine whether to support the measure, Casoni said.

The filing of the SAVE Act comes a week after a report of the second right whale carcass this year, both off Virginia, based on preliminary analyses, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. The decomposed carcass was reported May 31 on Metompkin Island, Virginia. After a review of the photos, the carcass was tentatively identified as a North Atlantic right whale, and bone samples will be submitted for genetic verification.

The SAVE Act itself, which stands for Scientific Assistance for Very Endangered North Atlantic Right Whales, was introduced by U.S. Reps. Seth Moulton and William Keating, both Democrats from Massachusetts, and House members from Arizona and California, and by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, with co-sponsors from New York, New Jersey, Florida and Delaware.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Boston advocacy group sues NMFS twice

May 11, 2018 — The Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston, Massachusetts-based environmental advocacy group, filed two law lawsuits this week against the US’ top fishing regulatory agency over environmental concerns, Courthouse News reports.

In one lawsuit, filed against the US National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric assistant administrator Chris Oliver and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the group says the partial passage, on April 9, of  New England’s Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment failed to meet some of its initial goals, like minimizing the impact of fishing gear on fish habitats.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Pair of Lawsuits Seek to Bolster Protections for Right Whale

May 11, 2018 — WASHINGTON — The critically endangered right whale took center stage in a pair of federal lawsuits from an environmental nonprofit that says a significant reduction in protected fish habitat in the Northeast will further imperil the whale and other fish species.

In one of the lawsuits filed Monday, the Conservation Law Foundation says partial passage on April 9 of New England’s Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment failed to meet some of its initially worthy goals, like minimizing the impact of fishing gear on fish habitats.

The Conservation Law Foundation says the amendment opened up more than 3,000 square miles of once protected ocean in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to commercial fishing activities known to destroy fish habitats.

“In the region, the final Amendment reduced the amount of currently protected essential fish habitat by over 40 percent and lifted current restrictions on destructive fishing practices in vital parts of the remaining ‘protected’ habitat, including areas that are critical habitat for endangered North Atlantic right whales,” the complaint says.

In particular, the environmentalists argue federal regulators have failed to minimize the impacts of fishing gears in the Cashes Ledge area, which has been closed since 2002 to large bottom trawls and other bottomtending fishing gears capable of catching groundfish.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

 

Coast Guard, NOAA Increase Efforts to Protect North Atlantic Right Whale

May 5, 2018 — BOSTON — Northeast Coast Guard units and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Law Enforcement personnel are increasing focus this year on the enforcement of the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan(ALWTRP), to detect and deter illegally placed fishing gear and reduce the likelihood of fatal whale entanglements from occurring.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and in alignment with whale migration patterns, increased operations will run May 1 through June 30 and compromise of more frequent air and sea patrols in seasonal gear closure areas by NOAA law enforcement personnel and Coast Guard patrol boats, cutter crews, and air assets.

Additionally, Coast Guard units across the First District will engage in an operation taking aim on at-sea inspections of unattended lobster and gillnet gear. The goal is to identify and affect the removal of illegally rigged and improperly marked gear in an effort to decrease whale entanglements within New England’s waters.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today