Saving Seafood

Floating Wind Farms are About to Transform the Oceans

November 5, 2021 — Alla Weinstein did not invent the floating wind turbine. This is something she wanted to make clear early in our Zoom call, as if she were worried I’d give her too much credit. “I don’t need to invent. There are plenty of inventions,” she said. “But a lot of inventions die on the grapevine if they aren’t carried through.” What Weinstein does is carry them through.

For that, she does want credit. When I asked if she’d put the idea of floating offshore wind generation in the minds of California’s energy commissioners, she bristled cheerfully. “I would put it more strongly than that,” she said, shaking her auburn curls. “I didn’t give anyone ideas. I basically told them, ‘This is what needs to be done.’” The state needed clean energy, she reasoned, and she knew a couple of inventors with the technology to produce it: a floating platform designed to support a wind turbine on the surface of just about any large water body in the world.

If you haven’t been following the tortured saga of offshore wind power—or even if you have—you may not recognize how completely floating offshore wind technology stands to alter the global energy landscape. Just 10 years ago, installing offshore wind in the Eastern Pacific Ocean was technologically impossible: Conventional wind turbines typically sit atop giant steel cylinders called “monopiles,” which have to be driven into the ocean floor and rarely sink deeper than 100 feet. Other structures, known as “four-legged jackets,” can go as deep as 200 feet. But the continental shelf off California breaks fast and steep, dropping to depths of more than 600 feet not far from shore. Floating platforms, meanwhile, can sit on the surface of oceans thousands of feet deep, and can be assembled onshore and towed to their various destinations—as far out as transmission cables buried in the seafloor can extend back to land.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

 

Government, conservation groups file appeal to reinstate seasonal lobstering ban

November 1, 2021 — The federal government and a group of conservation organizations filed an appeal this week of a recent court decision that stopped a planned seasonal closure to traditional lobstering in an area of the Gulf of Maine.

The closure, which would have gone into effect Oct. 18, was intended to help protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and would have made traditional, rope-and-buoy lobstering off-limits in the lucrative 967-square-mile zone from October to January.

The Maine Lobstering Union, Fox Island Lobster Co. of Vinalhaven and Damon Family Lobster Co. of Stonington filed a joint lawsuit against the fisheries service last month in an effort to block the closure, arguing that regulators used flimsy science to justify the restricted area.

In his ruling, issued just two days before the closure would have been implemented, U.S. District Judge Lance Walker sided with the lobstering groups and said regulators had relied on “markedly thin” statistical modeling instead of hard evidence to prove the area they had planned to close was really a highly traveled area for the imperiled whale.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

The state of the whales: 4 takeaways from this year’s Right Whale Consortium meeting

October 28, 2021 — The annual meeting of the North Atlantic Right Whale consortium started with a gut punch: there are now only about 336 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, the lowest number in nearly 20 years.

And not many people know about it: A Pew survey released in April found that only 29% of people living along the east coast had ever heard of the North Atlantic right whale.

The two-day meeting gathered researchers, industry representatives, government officials and conservation managers to share updates on regulations, research, and efforts to educate the public. The goal: to reduce the dramatic decline in the whale population.

Read the full story at WBUR

Federal rules are sinking Maine’s lobster industry

October 25, 2021 — As a lifelong Maine lobsterman, I understand the inherent dangers of my job. I keep watch on the forecast knowing that sudden weather changes can make the difference between a successful day at work and putting my crew’s life at risk. These days, however, the hazard posed by Mother Nature does not compare with the perfect storm of regulations coming out of Washington that threaten my job, our way of life and may eventually sink a fishery that has supported communities and generations of families here in Maine.

In May, National Marine Fisheries Service released a nearly 1,000-page document outlining a 10-year plan that mandates a seemingly unreachable goal to reduce risk from our industry to the endangered North Atlantic right whale by 98 percent. This not only affects me, but nearly 10,000 other men and women who make their living hauling traps.

The fisheries service rolled out the first phase of this plan in August, requiring new gear modifications to add more traps to each buoy line while simultaneously making each line weaker. These measures reduce risk by removing a lot of rope from the ocean and help any entangled right whale to break free from the lines that remain, but they will most certainly make a lobsterman’s already dangerous job even more so.

Recently, a federal judge in Bangor temporarily delayed a seasonal closure of more than 950 square miles of prime lobstering ground off Maine. While we are relieved with this decision, the proposed closure reflects just one in a long line of decisions in the government’s plan that is supposed to protect right whales. The problem is this misguided plan takes aim at the wrong target and may destroy our industry while doing little to help protect the whale.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

 

Endangered Whale Population Sinks Close to 20-Year Low

October 25, 2021 — A type of whale that is one of the rarest marine mammals in the world lost nearly 10% of its population last year, a group of scientists and ocean life advocates said on Monday.

The North Atlantic right whale numbered only 366 in 2019, and its population fell to 336 in 2020, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium said. The estimate is the lowest number in nearly two decades.

Right whales were once abundant in the waters off New England, but were decimated during the commercial whaling era due to their high concentrations of oil. They have been listed as endangered by the U.S. government for more than half a century.

The whales have suffered high mortality and poor reproduction in some recent years. There were more than 480 of the animals as recently as 2011. They’re vulnerable to fatal entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with large ships, and even when they survive, they often emerge less fit and less able to feed and mate, said Scott Kraus, chair of the consortium.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at US News & World Report

Judge is right that more data needed before part of ocean put off limits to lobster harvesting

October 22, 2021 — A federal judge’s order last week to temporarily stop the planned closure of a large swath of the Gulf of Maine to lobster fishing is welcome news to Maine’s lobster industry, but also to those who believe that data should guide decisions about protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales.

In August, federal fisheries regulators announced new rules for lobster fishing gear and the closure of 950 square miles of ocean about 30 miles off the coast from Mount Desert Island to Casco Bay to traditional lobster fishing from October to January. Ropeless fishing, a new and largely untested way of setting and retrieving traps using a smartphone, would still be allowed in this area under the rules. The closure was set to go into effect this week.

The new regulations came despite years of pleas from lobstermen, Maine elected officials and this editorial board that any decisions about measures to be taken to protect the whales needed to be made based on actual data about where and how whales are being injured, entangled and, too often, killed.

Without better data, Maine’s lobster industry was being asked to make substantial — and costly — changes that may not have addressed the biggest threats to right whales. Other threats include collisions with shipping vessels.

Read the full editorial at the Bangor Daily News

 

Maine Lobstering Union Lands Injunction to Halt Right Whale Lobster Fishing Area Closure

October 19, 2021 — The Maine Lobstering Union (MLU) was granted emergency relief by U.S. District Judge Lance E. Walker on October 16 to halt an impending closure of a lobster fishing area off Maine.

The closure was set to be implemented as part of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan Modifications announced at the end of August.

After learning of the closure, the MLU, along with other industry groups including the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA), sued the NMFS over the right-whale related rule changes.

According to the MLU, the closure would have impacted a large area of “prime lobstering territory.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

 

U.S. waterways plan draws lawsuit over species impacts

October 13, 2021 — A U.S. plan to expand the commercial use of navigable waterways increases risks to already imperiled species like the North Atlantic right whale, an environmental group claims in a lawsuit filed in Newport News, Virginia federal court on Tuesday.

The Center for Biological Diversity accuses the U.S. Maritime Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, of violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA) with its America’s Marine Highway program by failing to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure the program does not jeopardize species protected under the statute.

The Center for Biological Diversity says that many of the marine highways are located in critical habitats for ESA-listed species, including humpback whales and leatherback sea turtles.

Read the full story at Reuters

Maine lobster industry decries lack of clarity on enforcement of new whale-protection rules

October 12, 2021 — State and federal regulators say they are prepared to enforce the 967-square-mile area of the Gulf of Maine that will be closed to traditional lobstering for the next three months but have been tight-lipped about what the enforcement will look like or what the penalties might be for anyone who is found in violation of the closure area.

Environmentalists, who support the closure designed to help protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales from becoming entangled in lobstering gear, say the lack of details isn’t surprising, but Maine lobster industry officials are frustrated by the silence.

According to Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the industry is still grappling with trying to understand why the area is even going to be closed in the first place. The closure goes into effect Oct. 18. 

“Now it’s happening and we’ve had zero correspondence on what the rules of operation will be, what the enforcement will be,” she said. “The entire closure has literally fallen from the sky, and we’ve been given very little information and (told) to get out of there. … Everything I’ve seen is Oct. 18, here’s the box (outlining the closure area), get your gear out.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Maine Lobstermen’s Association: Maine lobstermen frustrated by whale rules

October 7, 2021 — On Aug.31, the National Marine Fisheries Service released the long-awaited final rule which outlines measures for the Northeast lobster fishery to reduce the risk of entangling right whales by 60 percent. The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is committed to action to recover the North Atlantic right whale, but the species cannot rebuild without a conservation plan supported by scientific evidence and comparable measures implemented in Canada and the U.S. shipping industry. The MLA remains extremely concerned that NMFS is placing an unwarranted burden on the Maine lobster fishery.

The U.S. lobster fishery implemented new regulations more than a decade ago which have reduced known right whale entanglement in U.S. lobster gear by 90 percent.

“According to NMFS data, the Maine lobster fishery has not had a documented entanglement with a North Atlantic right whale in over 17 years and has never been known to kill or seriously injure a right whale,” said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the MLA.

By comparison, an historic number of right whales have died in Canadian waters over the past five years, and Canada has yet to implement protections comparable to the U.S. Moreover, the most current, best available scientific evidence documents a change in right whale migration patterns away from Maine waters and into Canada and other areas.

Read the full article at National Fisherman