Saving Seafood

For lobster industry, a boatload of stresses

July 8, 2019 — This year’s delayed lobster season kicked off with a cold, rainy spring and bait worries, but lobstermen haven’t been idle. Instead, they’ve been hunting for a way to cope with looming North Atlantic right whale protections.

“The overall feeling around the docks this year is pretty glum,” said Jason Joyce of Swans Island. “Catch is low, expenses are high and (there are) stormy forecasts ahead thanks to wealthy, politically connected multinational environmental groups that have been targeting us as their latest fundraising villain.”

Lousy spring weather means many midcoast lobstermen have set only half their traps. Farther Down East, lobstermen have set their traps but the catches are light. Topping it off: Bait prices are about twice what they were last summer in some ports.

Underscoring those challenges is the persistent uncertainty about what right whale protections will do to Maine’s $485 million industry, a concern heightened by recent reports of six right whale deaths in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Many of Maine’s 4,500 licensed commercial lobster fishermen have been following federal efforts to protect the endangered right whale, especially a mandate that the Maine fleet reduce its buoy lines by half to prevent entanglements.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Immediate Action Needed to Save North Atlantic Right Whales

July 5, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species, with only about 400 whales remaining. The situation has become even more alarming with the recent discovery of six North Atlantic right whale deaths and one entanglement in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. Four deaths were mature females. With fewer than 95 breeding females left, protecting every individual is a top priority. Right whales cannot withstand continued losses of mature females—we have reached a critical point.

Vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are the two greatest threats to these whales, and to make matters more complex, their habitat overlaps with commercially important areas. As right whales live and travel more than 1,000 miles from their feeding grounds off the Canadian Maritimes and New England to the warm coastal waters off South Carolina, Georgia, and northeastern Florida, it is the responsibility of the governments of the United States and Canada as well as the fishing and shipping industries in both countries to ensure that these whales have a safe place to live, feed, and reproduce for their survival.

The United States has endeavored for many years to reduce the risks to North Atlantic right whales from entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships, and we continually refine our management measures to support recovery of this critically endangered population. In 2008, we adopted ship strike reduction measures that include seasonal speed restrictions near shipping lanes when right whales might be present. Since 1997, we have worked with stakeholders on the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan to reduce the impacts of commercial fishing gear on right whales. We are currently expediting measures to reduce an additional 60 percent of serious injuries and lethal entanglement risks as recommended by our Take Reduction Team in April 2019.

Read the full release here

Scientists Sound Alarm After 6 Rare Whale Deaths in a Month

July 5, 2019 — A half-dozen North Atlantic right whales have died in the past month, leading scientists, government officials and conservationists to call for a swift response to protect the endangered species.

There are only a little more than 400 of the right whales left. All six of the dead whales have been found in the Gulf of St. Lawrence off Canada, and at least three appear to have died after they were hit by ships.

The deaths have led scientists to sound the alarm about a potentially catastrophic loss to the population. The deaths are especially troubling because they include females, said Philip Hamilton, research scientist with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.

“If we’re going to have deaths, they just can’t be female,” Hamilton said, adding the population is down to only about 100 reproductive females. “We need a different system.”

Right whales have suffered high mortality and poor reproduction in recent years, particularly in 2017. The whales appear to be traveling in different areas of the ocean than usual because of food availability, said Nick Record, senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Six Right Whale Deaths In One Month: ‘Panicking Seems Appropriate’

July 3, 2019 — Five North Atlantic right whales have been found dead in the past week, and six in the last month. With just over 400 remaining and calving rates low, that’s a death toll the critically endangered population can’t afford.

“Panicking seems appropriate, yes,” said Peter Corkeron, who leads the large whale research program at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

The whales’ death toll is similar to that of the summer of 2017, when there was one death in early June, and then, later in the month, five deaths in the span of a week, all in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. That summer went on to become catastrophic for the whales, with a total of 12 documented fatalities in Canadian waters and another six in U.S. waters.

There are notable differences, as well, though. In 2017, some whales were hit by ships, but many of the deaths were due to whales getting tangled in fishing gear. This year, ship strikes seem to be the primary problem.

Large numbers of North Atlantic right whales have been sighted in the western Gulf of St. Lawrence in recent summers. Corkeron says that may be because of a subtle shift in where the animals are spending their time. Right whales have only started showing up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in significant numbers in the past few years, a change in their migration patterns that researchers attribute to climate change.

Read the full story at WGBH

Changes to lobster fishery to help whales might arrive 2021

June 28, 2019 — Changes to the Maine lobster fishery designed to help a critically endangered species of whale might arrive in 2021 after a lengthy rulemaking process.

A team assembled by the federal government has called for the removal of half the vertical trap lines from the Gulf of Maine to reduce risk to North Atlantic right whales. The Maine Department of Marine Resources has been meeting with lobstermen around the state to begin the process of crafting rules to achieve that goal.

The state held the last of several meetings with lobstermen about the new rules on Thursday in Freeport. Hundreds of members of the state’s lifeblood industry have attended the meetings.

Maine hopes to present a plan to the federal government by September, department spokesman Jeff Nichols said before the meeting. The industry is getting ready to grapple with the task of getting so much gear out of the water, said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

“There’s definitely concern among lobstermen because they will be changing how they fish,” she said. “It’s not a simple task, but once guys are thinking it through and making changes, there seems to be viable strategies for each person.”

Read the full story at the Associated Press

A Life-Long Lobsterman Also Works Hard On Ways To Avoid Whales

June 28, 2019 — Rob Martin was five miles out on his boat, Resolve, lobstering with his crew, and made a call on his way back to port.

Martin wasn’t calling his buyer. He was joining a conference call for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, of which he is a member.

Martin intended to just listen, but they started talking about gear modifications, which he knows a good deal about.

They asked him to chime in as he was offloading, but there was quite a bit of background noise on his end.

“Can you hold on a second? I have to shut the boat down,” he remembers asking. “Actual fisherman here out fishing and coming in to talk!”

The conversation revolved around installing breakaway sleeves in vertical lines from traps to buoys so whales can snap them on contact and not become entangled.

Martin wasn’t required to make those changes, but he already had. He has been working for years to find a way to continue fishing and protect whales, like other proactive lobstermen. So when managers and others first started talking about “breakaway” lines he took the hint and started retrofitting his gear. In the 1990s, when regulators were looking at sinking lines to help avoid whales, he got ahead of that too. Sinking lines, weighted to drop to the bottom if they break free, are now a requirement.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Grandmother and Grandfather Among 4 Endangered Whales That Died This Month

June 26, 2019 — Four North Atlantic right whales were found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada in the last three weeks, representing about one percent of the remaining population that is closely watched.

One, named Punctuation, was a breeding female who had mothered eight calves and then gone on to have several grandchildren, making her death a significant loss for a dwindling population. She had been sighted as long ago as 38 years.

Another, known as Comet, was roughly 33 years old and well known to whale-watching experts, who also said that he had become a grandfather.

Two others were a younger male named Wolverine that died earlier this month, and an 11-year-old female that was found dead along with Comet near New Brunswick’s Acadian Peninsula on Tuesday night.

The New England Aquarium, which tracks the endangered population, said in a statement: “The loss of sexually mature females is biologically a major loss to this species that has seen a precipitous population decline over the past several years.”

The aquarium noted that hundreds of the right whales had migrated northward into the Gulf of St. Lawrence as warming waters reduced their food source, mainly copepods in the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Rep. Golden’s effort to withhold whale protection money fails

June 21, 2019 — An amendment filed by Maine Rep. Jared Golden to prohibit federal regulators from spending money on right whale protections that would impact lobstermen was voted down Thursday.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 345-84 to kill the amendment to the U.S. Department of Commerce spending bill. The proposed budget rider was also supported by Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District.

In defense of his amendment, Golden, D-2nd District, told a largely empty House chamber that it was needed to protect Maine’s $485-million- a-year lobster industry from being unfairly blamed for a problem that it didn’t cause. Good science would prove that, Golden said.

“(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), facing the threat of lawsuits, has rushed ahead using a tool that was developed for the purpose of reducing ship strikes by the Navy,” Golden said. Then NOAA “fed that tool with old data and hasty assumptions.”

“For years now, Maine lobstermen have made sacrifices with almost no measurable effect on right whales,” Golden said later Thursday in an emailed statement. “My amendment simply required the government to ensure the use of sound science and reliable data before they take even more from our lobstermen. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Backing lobstermen, Rep. Golden seeks to withhold funds for right whale protections

June 20, 2019 — Rep. Jared Golden wants to withhold federal funding for the implementation of lobster fishing rules intended to protect the endangered right whale, claiming the government is basing the regulations on an untested scientific tool.

Maine’s 2nd District congressman, a Democrat, introduced an amendment to a pending appropriations bill that would effectively block controversial right whale regulations requiring Maine’s $485 million a year industry to cut the number of buoy lines in the Gulf of Maine by 50 percent to prevent fatal fishing gear entanglements.

“The federal government is asking Maine lobstermen to make huge sacrifices without clear evidence that those sacrifices will have any positive impact on right whales,” Golden wrote in a statement Wednesday. “I’ve joined lobstermen to voice our concerns and now it’s time for action.

Golden said it is important to help the right whale, but he joined the Maine lobster industry and Maine’s fishing managers in a common refrain: the federal government has no conclusive proof that right whales are getting hurt or killed by entanglement in Maine lobster gear.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Deer Isle lobstermen offer whale rule alternative

June 17, 2019 — For Maine lobstermen, 2019 is likely to bring a summer of discontent.

Fuel prices are high. Cuts in herring fishing quotas — with further cuts likely — mean that bait is likely to be extremely scarce, and whatever’s available extremely expensive as the season develops. And that’s the good news.

What really has lobstermen worked up is the demand by federal regulators that they reduce the risk of death or injury to endangered right whales in the Gulf of Maine by 60 percent. To do that, Maine lobstermen will have to reduce the number of vertical endlines in the water — the lines that link traps on the bottom to buoys on the surface — by 50 percent.

Despite the harsh restrictions, the recommendations of NOAA’s Large Whale Take Reduction Team were a victory of sorts. For the time being, there is no suggestion of closing areas of the Gulf of Maine to fishing and the demand by some conservation organizations for the use of “ropeless” fishing gear was quashed.

Last Thursday, Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher drew a packed house to a meeting of the Zone C Lobster Management Council, held at the Reach Performing Arts Center in the Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary School, to explain the regulatory process and to hear suggestions from lobstermen as to how best to meet the line reduction goal in the area where they fish.

It was the second of seven meetings Keliher has scheduled with the state’s seven zone councils this month. Carl Wilson, DMR’s chief scientist, and most of the department’s upper echelon, were on hand as well.

DMR is working on a very tight timeline, Keliher said.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American