Saving Seafood

Tally of endangered right whale calves spotted so far this year increases to seven

May 28, 2019 — Seven North Atlantic right whale calves have been spotted off the coast of the United States so far in 2019 – a positive development for the critically endangered species, according to a recent report from CBC News.

Last year, no new North Atlantic right whale calves were born, and the overall population for the species was estimated to be just 411 individuals. The increased presence of calves this year is encouraging for research scientists like Garry Stenson, who heads the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) marine mammal division in Canada.

“It’s really nice to start seeing that we’re getting more calves,” Stenson told CBC News. “It’s gonna take a lot more before we’re gonna be feeling at all comfortable, but it does help to have some. It’s a much better view than what we had last year.”

Plane surveillance carried out this month revealed that North Atlantic right whales have returned to Canadian waters earlier than usual this year, arriving in late May instead of the typical June, the DFO said.

One of the world’s three right whale populations, North Atlantic right whales usually spend their winters in warmer waters nearby Florida and Georgia before migrating to New England and the Canadian Maritimes for the summer. In years past during this migration, entanglements in fishing lines deployed by lobster and crab fishing operations and ship strikes have resulted in several whale deaths. In 2017, 17 right whales died from ship strikes or entanglements in fishing gear, and in 2018, an additional three right whales died from similar causes.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Where Did the Right Whales Go?

May 23, 2019 — Something happened to the population of North Atlantic right whales in the last decade, as their numbers shrank and fewer calves were born.

Scientists had long speculated that a change had occurred in the whales’ sources of food. By 2017, only 411 animals were counted, down from 482 in 2010. A paper published this month in the journal Oceanography, links warming in the Gulf of Maine with the life cycle of the copepod Calanus finmarchicus, a tiny shrimplike creature that forms the foundation of the right whale diet.

Although it is hard to prove cause and effect, the paper’s lead author, Nicholas Record, said the study connected “the big ocean-scale climate changes” in the North Atlantic with the water coming into the Gulf of Maine and the whale’s food resources.

“All of these pieces lined up together really well,” said Dr. Record, senior research scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, a nonprofit institute in Boothbay, Maine. “It was really kind of stunning.”

An influx of warm water near the ocean floor in 2010 significantly reduced the abundance of the shrimplike creature in the Gulf of Maine that summer and fall. Warmer water would have brought in fewer Calanus and also meant that more died and were eaten earlier in the season, Dr. Record said, leaving less food, “right when right whales need their last big meal before winter.”

The whales followed the Calanus populations elsewhere, including to Cape Cod Bay and to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in northern Canada. Their shift in location may have created even bigger problems for the overall population, when they might have been hungry and moved to places with heavy shipping traffic.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Vineyard Wind seeks help in protecting right whales

May 23, 2019 — The company preparing to build an 84-turbine wind farm off Martha’s Vineyard has put out a call  to universities, technology companies and other innovators that could help implement a system to detect the presence of endangered North Atlantic right whales during construction.

Vineyard Wind said it is seeking a firm or institution that can “provide and operationalize enhanced acoustic monitoring systems that will detect the presence of Right Whales, and transmit information in real-time to project staff so that enhanced protections can be effectively implemented.”

Protection would include vessel speed restrictions, Vineyard Wind said.

Utility companies and the state tapped Vineyard Wind to construct an 800-megawatt wind farm 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and 34 miles from the mainland to fulfill the first half of a 1,600-megawatt procurement called for in a 2016 clean energy law.

The company has already entered an agreement with a number of organizations to protect the whales.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: Better information needed as Maine lobstermen take on challenge of protecting right whales

May 21, 2019 — In the early 2000s, the news appeared good for endangered North Atlantic right whales. Their population grew significantly, due to both rising numbers of births and fewer deaths from ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear.

That good news has come to an end. Twenty of the rare whales died in just two years — 2017 and 2018, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. For the first time in nearly four decades of monitoring, it appears no right whale calves were born last year.

The consortium estimates there are only 411 right whales off the Atlantic coast.

Given these dire numbers, U.S. fisheries regulators have proposed dramatic declines in the amount of fishing lines in waters where the whales are believed to congregate and pass through.

Last month, a team devoted to reducing right whale deaths told Maine officials that the state must reduce the risk it poses to right whales by 60 percent.

The team recommended that Maine’s lobster fishery cut the number of vertical lines in the water by half. Vertical lines run between traps and buoys on the surface of the water to mark their location. The recommendations will be turned into proposed federal rules, which will be subject to public comments. The process could take up to two years.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Cod Bay fishing gear restriction lifted

May 13, 2019 — The director of the Division of Marine Fisheries has rescinded the Cape Cod Bay gear restriction for fishermen and speed limit restrictions intended to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales, according to a statement released Thursday night.

The restrictions originally were set to end May 14, but a recent aerial survey by the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies showed that right whales have migrated out of state waters adjacent to Cape Cod.

Commercial and recreational fishermen are now allowed to set their trap gear in the waters north and east of Cape Cod, the statement says. Boaters operating vessels smaller than 65 feet in length may now operate at a speed greater than 10 knots.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Finding consensus on whale protections a tough call in Maine

May 13, 2019 — Federal regulators have given Maine’s lobster industry its marching orders: Find a way to cut the number of surface-to-seabed fishing lines by 50 percent to help prevent the injury or death of even one of the endangered right whales that pass through the Gulf of Maine.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is allowing each lobstering state to develop its own plan to protect the whale, whose numbers have fallen to a little more than 400 in recent years. But it will be hard to find one way to make it work in Maine, where the $485 million-a-year fishery is known for its diversity.

“The devil will be in the details,” said state Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher.

Of the 4,500 people who lobster for a living along Maine’s coast, some fish with single traps at the end of each buoy line while others place multiple traps, from two or three to as many as 30, on a single weighted ground line, with both ends linked to the surface by a single buoy line.

Deciding how many traps to put on a trawl – the gear that connects a line of lobster traps – varies throughout each of the state’s seven lobster zones, depending on traditional fishing practices, shipping traffic, the geography of the ocean floor and the size of the lobster operation.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobstermen rally against delay in opening season

May 10, 2019 — South Shore lobstermen rallied Thursday morning at Town Wharf to protest the decision by the state Division of Marine Fisheries to delay the opening of the season until May 14 to protect right whales.

“There’s a lot of people that are suffering with this closure,” said rally organizer Sheryl Holmes, whose husband, Roscoe “Stoney” Holmes, is a commercial lobsterman who owns the F/V Haley’s Comet out of Plymouth.

The seasonal speed reductions and trap-gear bans imposed by the state to protect right whales typically end May 1, but have been extended first to May 8, and now to May 14.

Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times at the Patriot Ledger

Lobstering industry objecting to ‘unfair closure’

May 9, 2019 — Lobstering industry members plan to gather in Plymouth on Thursday to speak out against what they see as the unfair closure of lobstering in the waters south of Scituate.

Industry representatives on the South Shore say they have worked to implement fishing techniques to protect right whales but say their efforts have been ignored by regulators in favor of blanket policies. They plan to make the case that there have been no whale entanglements in certain parts of Cape Cod Bay.

In late April, the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team recommended measures that could protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobstermen to rally in Plymouth over Cape Cod Bay closures

May 9, 2019 — After a period of bad weather, surveyors of North Atlantic right whales were able to fly on Tuesday over Cape Cod Bay, where the continuing presence of the animals has led state officials to extend seasonal bans on high boating speeds and lobstering through May 14.

But commercial lobstermen are beginning to bristle at the closures, citing the impact on their livelihood. South Shore lobstermen are planning a rally Thursday morning in Plymouth to protest the extended ban.

“There’s a lot of people that are suffering with this closure,” said rally organizer Sheryl Holmes, whose husband, Roscoe “Stoney” Holmes, is a commercial lobsterman who owns the F/V Haley’s Comet out of Plymouth.

The seasonal speed reductions and trap-gear bans imposed by the state Division of Marine Fisheries to protect right whales typically end May 1, but have been extended first to May 8, and now to May 14.

The Plymouth rally will be the first time commercial lobstermen in the region have come out as a group to protest against the closure extensions due to the ongoing presence of right whales, Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association Executive Director Beth Casoni said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

New England Stakeholders Agree On Recommendations For Reducing Risk Of Right Whale Entanglements

April 28, 2019 — Stakeholders from 14 states agreed Friday on recommendations for reducing the risk that endangered North Atlantic right whales will be injured or killed by entanglement with fishing gear, with big stakes for Maine’s lobster industry.

The state’s delegation agreed to reduce the vertical lines its lobster fleet puts in the water by 50 percent, as well as reducing rope strength and a more rigorous gear-marking program.

Steuben lobsterman Michael Sargent is a member of the “Take Reduction Team” that met for four days this week in Providence. He says the proposal would require him to take more than 10 miles of rope out of the water.

He says he is scared, but can live with it.

“It’s scary for me, but I know that’s something I can go back to my fishery and explain to my fishermen,” says Sargent. “This is something we can do. I think it’s a realistic number. It’s something a lot of fishermen understand. And I would be willing to go back and have that conversation.”

Read the full story at Maine Public