Saving Seafood

Pew requests area closures in the name of right whales, suggests trap and line limits as next step

June 18, 2020 — On Thursday, June 18, Pew submitted a petition to the Commerce Secretary requesting an immediate shutdown of some federal waters off the coast of New England to commercial lobster and Jonah crab fishing. A letter signed by Peter Baker of Pew Charitable Trusts and attorney Purcie Bennett-Nickerson accompanied the petition.

“Specifically, we request that you designate one year-round closure south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and three seasonal offshore closures in the Gulf of Maine in which the use of vertical lines in the American lobster and Jonah crab fisheries is prohibited,” the letter states. “The proposed areas have been scientifically identified as posing the greatest risk of entanglement to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.”

U.S. lobster fleets and fishery leaders have long been leaders in reducing interactions with marine mammals, often voluntarily implementing expensive gear changes, and time and area closures. The fleets targeted by the petition have also been working through NMFS’ Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team to develop a NOAA-mandated 60 percent reduction in vertical lines in the water.

“Why are they bringing these proposals forward at this point?” asked Dave Borden, executive director of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association and an Area 2 lobsterman. “Pew as an organization never offered a comprehensive fix that I know of.”

Atlantic commercial lobstering organizations are also working on a deadline to provide material for a federal case and did not receive notice on the petition from Pew.

“They did not distribute a copy to us,” Borden said. “I’ve been working on the depositions for the right whale case that are due tomorrow.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

National Report on Large Whale Entanglements Confirmed in the United States in 2018

June 11, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries has released a National Report on Large Whale Entanglements Confirmed in the United States in 2018. Many large whale populations are increasing in the United States, but entanglements in fishing gear or marine debris are a growing threat to the continued welfare and recovery of these species. Severe entanglements can kill or seriously injure large whales. Entanglements involving threatened or endangered species can have significant negative impacts to the population as a whole.

NOAA Fisheries coordinates the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, which includes partners in the Large Whale Entanglement Response Network. They help us track and document as many of these incidents as possible. Entanglements represent a serious human-caused threat to large whales at the individual and population levels. Scientists and managers analyze entanglement data to determine:

  • Rates and severity of entanglements
  • Type of gear or debris causing the entanglement
  • Injuries and impact to the animal

Managers use that information to evaluate existing conservation measures and implement new ones as warranted to reduce the threat of entanglements in the future.

There were 105 confirmed entanglement cases nationally in 2018. This was above the 11-year average (70.8 + 21.8) and more than 25 percent higher than the number of cases in 2017. Some of the entanglements involved North Atlantic right whales on the East Coast, which could impede recovery of that critically endangered species. The National Large Whale Entanglement Response Network responded to 37 of 92 cases involving entangled live whales and successfully removed entangling gear from 16 whales. This increased their chances of survival as well as collected important documentation.

Read the full release here

Maine Looking for New Ways to Save Whales From Fishing Gear

June 3, 2020 — Maine is in the final year of funding for a project that seeks to better protect endangered whales in the Gulf of Maine from entanglement in fishing gear.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources is using the project to collect data about vertical line fishing in the gulf, and develop a model to determine the fishing industry’s current use of the lines. The department is also hoping to use the model to predict the conservation benefits of new proposed regulations.

The state is slated to receive more than $200,000 in federal funds for the project this fiscal year, bringing the total federal money it has received to more than $700,000, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Less Effort, More Lobster? New Research Suggests That Fewer Traps Can Still Yield Profitable Results

June 1, 2020 — New research suggests that the U.S. lobster industry could place fewer traps in the water and still gain just as much profit. And that finding could play a role in the debate over what should be required of Maine lobstermen to reduce entanglements with endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed Marine Policy Journal. Lead researcher Hannah Myers is a graduate student at the University of Alaska’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Studies. She took a close look at landings and other data from lobster-fishing territory that crosses the international Hague Line between Nova Scotia and Maine.

“We found that Canadian fishers in the Gulf of Maine caught about the same amount of lobster using seven and a half times less effort than Maine fishers on the U.S. side,” she says.

The researchers found that while the Canadians spent fewer days at sea and fished fewer traps, the traps they pulled had almost four times as many lobsters in them.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Lobstermen don’t need all the traps they use, research claims

May 29, 2020 — New research suggests that the U.S. lobster industry could place fewer traps in the water and still gain just as much profit. And that finding could play a role in the debate over what should be required of Maine lobstermen to reduce entanglements with endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed Marine Policy Journal. Lead researcher Hannah Myers, a graduate student at the University of Alaska’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, examined landings and other data from lobster-fishing territory that crosses the international Hague Line between Nova Scotia and Maine.

Myers’ research might help to end an impasse between animal-rights activists who are looking to reduce entanglements injurious, if not fatal, to the whales and have said that Maine fishing lines are at least a statistically-significant threat to the creatures. Maine lobstermen criticize activists and researchers as advancing poorly-researched and economically damaging arguments to their way of life. A plan recently advanced by Maine fishermen was criticized by researchers as not going far enough, while Maine’s federal and state government leaders have called on the federal government to back down on encroaching upon Maine lobstermen.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Conservation groups seek vertical line ban off Massachusetts coast

May 19, 2020 — The conservation groups that filed a federal lawsuit two years ago to force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to do more to protect endangered right whales from entanglement with fishing gear have asked U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg to ban lobster fishing gear with vertical buoy lines off the coast of Massachusetts.

The affected area would be south of the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity and several other plaintiff conservation groups, the area “has increasingly become important right whale foraging and socializing habitat in recent years.”

The conservation groups filed their request last Friday, three weeks after the judge ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the federal Endangered Species Act when it continued to allow lobster fishing with gear that used fixed vertical buoy lines in which whales could become entangled.

As a practical matter, a ban on the vertical lines that connect traps on the sea floor to marker buoys on the surface would amount to a total prohibition against lobster fishing in the area south of the two Massachusetts islands.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Lobstering group wants to raise $500,000 for legal defense fund

May 7, 2020 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association has launched a campaign to raise $500,000 to fund its legal efforts to protect the state’s most valuable fishery from the consequences of a recent federal court ruling that calls for more government protections for the endangered right whale.

Last month, a federal judge found the National Marine Fisheries Service had violated the U.S. Endangered Species Act by its authorization of the U.S. lobster industry – including Maine’s $485 million-a-year fishery – because it failed to report the fishery’s harmful impacts on the endangered right whale.

“This case could lead to closure of the world’s most sustainable fishery,” said executive director Patrice McCarron, whose association is the oldest and biggest lobstering group in Maine. “We cannot let that happen. Right whales are not dying in Maine lobster gear.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Maine Lobstermen’s Association Asks For Public Donations To Help ‘Save’ The Industry

May 7, 2020 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is calling for a half-million dollars in public donations to help it “save” the state’s lobster industry from potential extinction.

The MLA says the money would go to its legal defense of the fishery in a federal court case brought by conservationists who want better protections of the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The whales can be injured or killed by entanglement with rope used to tend trap-pot gear, such as lobster traps. But the MLA’s Executive Director Patrice McCarron says there is no proof that the whales are actually interacting with traps set by the Maine fleet.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Lobstermen launch campaign to save Maine industry; new threats on the horizon

May 6, 2020 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is fighting a federal ruling that threatens the demise of the fleet, according to Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

In early April, Judge James Boasberg of the Federal District Court for Washington, D.C., ruled that NMFS violated the ESA in permitting the lobster fishery. The judge’s opinion states that “Congress enacted the ESA in 1973 to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost.”

“The MLA has launched a campaign to raise $500,000 to save Maine’s lobster industry,” McCarron said. The MLA is an intervenor in the court case and is the only organization in Maine that has been granted standing to participate in the case.

Whale entanglement data collected by NMFS show that no right whale deaths or serious injuries have ever been documented in Maine lobster gear. This is in stark contrast to the death of 10 right whales in Canada last year.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

In another significant ruling for right whales, a federal judge rules that Massachusetts is violating the Endangered Species Act

May 4, 2020 — In another shot across the bow of the lobster industry, a federal judge ruled Thursday that state regulators have violated the Endangered Species Act by licensing lobstermen to use fishing gear that entangles North Atlantic right whales.

The ruling requires Massachusetts officials to obtain a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service to license vertical buoy lines, the ropes that connect lobster traps on the seafloor to buoys at the surface.

Those lines are vital to the fishery but have been the leading cause of death of right whales over the past decade, accounting for more than half of all known causes. In the past three years, 30 right whales have died, reducing their population to around 400.

In her ruling, Judge Indira Talwani of the US District Court in Boston said the continued use of buoy lines was likely to cause further harm to right whales, which scientists say could become functionally extinct within the next 20 years.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe