Saving Seafood

Gay Head Lighthouse joins right whale protection network

October 20, 2025 —  The Gay Head Lighthouse in Aquinnah has joined a marine safety network meant to reduce the number of vessel strikes for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

StationKeeper tracks vessel activity and sends messages directly from shore to vessels. Equipment installed at participating lighthouses makes it possible to warn mariners to slow down when they’re traveling through right whale habitat.

Race Point Lighthouse in Provincetown is a StationKeeper site, and more recently, the Gay Head Lighthouse in Aquinnah has joined the network, Gay Head Lighthouse principal keeper Chris Manning said.

“[StationKeeper] communicates and integrates with NOAA [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] to receive whale location data, and in turn it sends that information and the speed restriction zones to ships passing nearby,” he said. “As far as our role at the lighthouse, we host the system, but the system really operates and runs all on its own.”

Read the full article at CAI

MAINE: New Marine Resources survey sheds light on how Maine lobstermen feel about the industry

October 9, 2025 — This summer, Maine’s Department of Marine Resources surveyed commercial lobstermen on how they feel about and perceive their industry, for the first time since 2008. Results indicate that most lobstermen are concerned more about economics and whale regulations, than the lobster fishery itself.

But as the department shares its findings at Lobster Zone Council meetings up and down the coast, the agency says it is hearing a lot of thoughts and feelings that didn’t show up on paper.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Marine ‘superfertilizer’ is crucial for life in the ocean and on land, including humans

October 1, 2025 — Half the oxygen in your next breath did not come from trees on land. Scientists estimate that phytoplankton in the ocean make about half of the oxygen in the air in Earth’s atmosphere.

These microscopic drifters depend on nutrients that large whales move to the sunlit surface when they release nutrient rich waste.

Field research shows that marine mammals enhance primary productivity by concentrating nitrogen near the surface through flocculent fecal plumes.

Phytoplankton and oxygen

After decades of field work, Robert Kenney, an emeritus marine research scientist at the University of Rhode Island (URI), has traced how whales, prey, and currents shape each season. His perspective helps connect nutrients, food webs, and survival across years.

Phytoplankton are tiny photosynthetic organisms that turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen. Zooplankton are small animals that graze on them and feed fish, seabirds, and whales.

When nutrients are scarce near the surface, phytoplankton growth slows and the whole food web tightens. When nutrients pulse upward, growth accelerates and energy ripples through the system.

Whales often feed at depth and then return to the surface to rest, breathe, and digest. When they defecate near the surface, their waste carries nitrogen and iron that phytoplankton can use right away.

That burst of nutrients supports fast growth, which boosts food for krill and fish in the upper ocean. Many large whales filter this prey using baleen, flexible plates in their mouths that act like a sieve.

The loop continues when predators eat that prey and release nutrients again in shallow water. Over time, this recycling keeps productivity higher than it would be without whales.

Read the full article at Earth.com

NOAA council reels in proposal to encourage ‘ropeless’ fishing gear

September 29, 2025 — The New England Fishery Management Council tabled a proposal last week to encourage the use of “on-demand” and “ropeless” fishing gear in the Atlantic Ocean to protect right whales after industry groups and a Maine lawmaker argued the plan would unduly burden lobster fishermen.

At a Thursday council meeting in Gloucester, Massachusetts, fishermen and industry representatives decried the framework proposal, saying the new fishing gear remains unproven and would further disrupt an industry already facing heavy regulation in a difficult economy.

Earlier in the week, Rep. Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat, had also written a letter to NEFMC Executive Director Cate O’Keefe charging that the framework intended to protect endangered right whales from fishing gear entanglements was “premature and unnecessary.” Golden said it runs counter to a congressional mandate that the federal government should suspend any regulations targeting fishing gear until 2028.

Read the full article at E&E News

New England scientists honing models that predict where right whales will pop up next

September 22, 2025 — In recent years, efforts to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale population have included making ships slow down in known whale zones to avoid hitting them and encouraging fishing crews to use ropeless gear to prevent them from becoming entangled.

But changes to where the whales congregate have been challenging some of those efforts.

Now scientists at the University of Maine and the New England Aquarium in Boston are working together to improve their modelling to predict where the whales will be at any given time.

“North Atlantic right whales utilize a lot of the ocean environment, and so it’s really hard for humans to be out there observing them at all times,” Camille Ross, an associate research scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston, said in a radio interview with CBC New Brunswick’s Shift.

“And so models like this are really important to fill in those data gaps when we don’t have eyes on the water.”

Ross is the lead author of the study, called “Incorporating prey fields into North Atlantic right whale density surface models,” which was published in the latest edition of the research journal Endangered Species Research.

Read the full article at CBC News

Where the Copepods Are: Prey Data Can Improve Right Whale Models

September 16, 2025 — A new peer-reviewed study in Endangered Species Research finds that incorporating maps of copepod aggregations into North Atlantic right whale density models could improve those models’ predictions. The study used data on aggregations of three copepod species collected 2003–2017 from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to the Scotian Shelf in Canada. Scientists on the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Ecosystem Monitoring Survey collected that data.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, NOAA Fisheries studies marine mammals, including endangered North Atlantic right whales. We find ways to reduce risks posed to them by human activities and environmental change to recover and protect species.

Modeling Right Whale Distribution Supports Proactive Management

There are approximately 370 North Atlantic right whales remaining, including only about 70 reproductively active females. Right whales feed on copepods, a type of zooplankton. They forage off the Northeast coast of the United States and Canada in the winter and spring when copepods are most abundant there. Their foraging grounds overlap with shipping, fishing, and other human activities. This puts them at risk of entanglement and vessel strikes, the two primary causes of right whale deaths. Changes in climate and oceanographic conditions are shifting the availability of copepods and thus the distribution of whales. Modeling right whale distribution allows for effective management to prevent human-caused whale deaths and injuries. Examples of this include Right Whale Slow Zones and Dynamic Management Areas.

Scientists predict the distribution of these whales using density surface models based on visual data collected from aerial and shipboard surveys, along with acoustic data. For this study, scientists used aerial and shipboard survey data, which included 5,196 individual whale sightings by seven institutions from 2003-2017.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Right whale plane surveys in Gulf of Maine suspended with $200K budget cut

September 4, 2025 — Fall airplane surveys tracking North Atlantic right whales north of Cape Cod in the Gulf of Maine, run by the Provincetown-based Center for Coastal Studies, are off the table after federal funding was cut.

While the fall flights are grounded, the center’s leadership stressed that the winter and spring surveys over Cape Cod Bay remain unaffected and on schedule.

The center expanded its whale research program beyond the bay last year. The newer program was supported with funds from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that oversees ocean and wildlife programs.

North Atlantic right whales are among the world’s most endangered large whales species, and Cape Cod Bay is a key seasonal habitat, where a significant portion of the population gathers, especially in the spring.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

Golden proposed extension for whale rule implementation, local stakeholders reflect

August 21, 2025 — The current federal moratorium on whale rule regulations could be extended from 2028 to 2035, and local stakeholders are sharing their thoughts with the Islander on what the proposed extension could mean for the lobster industry and the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) urged the House Natural Resources Committee to extend a moratorium on regulations aimed at the lobster industry and designed to help protect the North Atlantic right whale from gear entanglements.

Golden said that the initial moratorium listed in the Maine Mammal Protection Act, which lasts from 2023 to 2028, is not enough time for the Maine government to gather data that would inform new regulations.

Several conservationists and scientists, on the other hand, think that there is already enough data to support implementing the original regulations.

“The premise behind the original regulations has since been struck down by the courts. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service had distorted the science and relied on egregiously wrong interpretations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in crafting its proposed rules,” Golden told the Committee on July 22. “The Court admonished the agency for basing its edicts on arbitrary, worst-case scenarios that were ‘very likely wrong.’”

He argued that an extended moratorium would provide adequate time for the state of Maine to collect data to inform new regulations.

Read the full article at Mount Dessert Islander

Why Maine lobstermen need an extended pause on new right whale rules

August 1, 2025 — Jared Golden of Lewiston represents Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

This piece was originally published on July 31 in “Dear Mainer,” Golden’s Substack. It is reposted here in its entirety, with permission.

I had a few goals when I successfully pushed to get a seat on the House Natural Resources Committee, but chief among them was using the position to advocate for the men and women who work on Maine’s waters.

It was only three years ago that Maine’s lobster industry was on the verge of shutting down because of a regulatory process that was based on flawed interpretation of federal law and biased modeling that relied heavily on hypothetical threats that fisheries posed to the North Atlantic right whale.

That is why one of my proudest accomplishments in Congress was the successful effort in 2022 — working with the entire Maine delegation and our governor on a bipartisan basis — to enact a moratorium on these regulations until 2028, coupled with additional funding to support right whale research.

However, based on developments in the last few years and my conversations with fishermen, I believe more time is needed to incorporate the research and data collected during the pause into future right whale regulations.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

Fishing groups push to postpone protections for endangered right whale to 2035

July 28, 2025 — A Maine congressman and several commercial fishing groups are getting behind a push to delay rules designed to protect a vanishing species of whale for 10 years.

The North Atlantic right whale numbers only about 370 and has declined over the last 15 years. They have been the subject of proposed federal fishing laws that are backed by conservation groups because the whales are threatened by lethal entanglement in commercial fishing gear.

The federal government is in the midst of a pause on federal right whale rules until 2028. Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and a coalition of fishing organizations said in letters to congressional officials that they want to extend that moratorium out to 2035.

Golden, who played a role in the initial moratorium, said extending the pause would give the government the time it needs to craft regulations that reflect science. He also said it would protect Maine’s lifesblood lobster fishing industry, which is one of the fishing sectors that would have to comply with rules intended to protect right whales.

Read the full article at the Associated Press