Saving Seafood

New tool aims to map whale movement

July 12, 2021 — A lot of people want to know where right whales are and where they are going. As the state’s lobster fishery faces dramatic changes to preserve the species, regulators, fishermen and conservationists all want to know the paths the critically endangered species take up and down the east coast.  

“We’re constantly being asked ‘Where did you get detections?’” said Genevieve Davis, a research biologist working in passive acoustic research at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass.  

To help visualize the paths of right whales, as well as several other species of whale, Davis and other researchers created a mapping tool based on data from underwater listening devices that have picked up the sounds of whales going all the way back to 2004.  

The map includes data from several different listening devices, known as hydrophones, operated from platforms such as bottom-mounted moorings, surface buoys, Slocum gliders and towed hydrophone arrays. It also brought together data from several different studies and researchers and compiled them into a single, navigable tool.  

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

NEFMC Receives Updates on Offshore Wind, Atlantic Herring, EBFM; Approves 2021-2025 Research Priorities

July 9, 2021 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council met June 22-24, 2021 by webinar. In addition to the actions the Council took on scallops, groundfish, and skates, here are other important highlights.

Habitat/Offshore Wind – The Council received offshore wind presentations from three different agencies.

  • The Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) covered how NOAA Fisheries cooperates and coordinates with other agencies on wind issues, develops checklists to help guide analyses of socio-economic impacts on fishing communities, as well as Endangered Species Act biological assessments and other analyses, conducts essential fish habitat (EFH) consultations and EFH mapping, and more;
  • The Northeast Fisheries Science Center focused on offshore wind impacts on federal scientific surveys and the associated implications; and
  • The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) provided a broad overview of offshore wind energy projects throughout the Atlantic region.

Read the full release here

How Fishing Communities Are Responding to Climate Change

July 8, 2021 — The following was released by Wellesley College:

What happens when climate change affects the abundance and distribution of fish? Fishers and fishing communities in the Northeast United States have adapted to those changes in three specific ways, according to new research published in Frontiers in Marine Science.

Becca Selden, Wellesley College assistant professor of biological sciences, and a team of colleagues examined how fishing communities have responded to documented shifts in the location of fluke and of red and silver hake. The team found that fishers made three distinct changes to their approaches: following the fish to a new location; fishing for a different kind of fish; and bringing their catch to shore at another port of landing.

Selden began this research as a postdoctoral scholar at Rutgers University in New Jersey with Eva Papaioannou, now a scientist at GEOMAR. They combined quantitative data on fish availability from surveys conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a unique geographic information system database from fishing trip records developed for this project. The researchers then interviewed fishers in 10 ports from North Carolina to Maine.

They explored three dominant strategies, and found that fishers throughout the Northeast were more likely to shift their target species. In interviews, the researchers learned that targeting a mix of species is a critical option for adaptation. Doing so can be complicated, however, because in many cases regulations and markets (or the lack of a market) constrain fishers’ ability to take advantage of a changing mix of species in fishing grounds. For example, in Point Pleasant, N.J., fishers can’t capitalize on an increase in dogfish in the region because of strict conservation measures that have been in place since 1988, when the species was declared over-fished, and the resulting absence of a market for those fish.

Read the full release here

In fight over right whales and lobster fishery, all sides want to know more about the whales’ activities off Maine

June 28, 2021 — The historic migration patterns of endangered North Atlantic right whales have been changing over the past decade, possibly due to climate change. Federal regulators, meanwhile, are considering drastic measures to protect the whales against deadly entanglement in fishing gear and rope.

So, the question of where and when the whales are swimming in relation to Maine’s lobster fishery is gaining urgency. Now, new efforts are underway to pinpoint their travel habits.

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration created a new website that maps almost two decades of work to detect whales off the east coast, via “passive acoustic” recorders set on buoys, on submerged platforms, and on underwater gliders that can zig and zag around the Gulf of Maine for months at a time.

“We’re seeing that you are getting whales. They are calling,” said Genevieve Davis, a research biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Track Whale Detections With This Interactive Map

June 25, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Scientists at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center have created a new data mapping tool to help people understand when and where large whales occur off the East Coast.

The underlying data include detections made by underwater listening devices — called hydrophones — operated from stationary platforms, such as bottom-mounted moorings and surface buoys. They were also made by mobile platforms like Slocum gliders and towed hydrophone arrays. The map includes sounds made by sei, fin, blue, humpback and North Atlantic right whales from 2004 to the present.

“Our goal was to provide all the archived data we have, plus data from collaborators, in one place and make it easy for managers, stakeholders and scientists to access it themselves and explore the data in a format that would be helpful,” said Sofie Van Parijs, one of the creators and lead of the center’s passive acoustics research group. “We hope to add in data collected by the wind industry, and invite other researchers and sources of this type of data to share what they have with us to make this dataset as comprehensive as possible.”

Those interested in contributing to the data can contact the developers at nmfs.pacmdata@noaa.gov.

Recent additions to the dataset include all beaked whales, sperm whales, and dwarf and pygmy sperm whales (Kogia species) detected from 2013 to the present. Current recording locations range from the waters of the western North Atlantic, off Greenland, to the Caribbean Sea.

Data about each detection is incorporated into the mapping tool, including:

  • Location
  • Season
  • Number of deployments of that recording gear
  • Number of recorded days and detections
  • Type of detection: definite, possible, no detection, or data collected but not yet analyzed.

Read the full release here

Gentrification pressures Northeast fishing communities

June 9, 2021 — Longtime small fishing ports in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts top the endangered list in a new NMFS social sciences study of how gentrification pressure is bearing down on those communities.

Barnegat Light, N.J., Montauk, N.Y., and Chatham, Mass., have history as home ports dating back to the 1700s, but transformed into high-priced resort towns in the 20th century. Inflating real estate values, tax burdens, development pressure, population growth are converging at a time when fishermen are facing regulatory and environmental challenges in their profession, the report shows.

Authors Matthew Cutler, a social scientist with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and Rose Jimenez, at the NOAA Center for Earth System Sciences and Remote Sensing Technology, applied a scoring matrix to assess social and economic changes in 29 Northeast ports from Virginia to Maine where commercial fishing is an important social and economic part of the community.

“We selected all the fishing communities in the Northeast region with ‘high’ fishing engagement scores in 2009–2018, which resulted in these 29 communities,” the authors explain in the report, published online in story map format.

“Then, for each year in each community, we added up the scores (ranging from 1 to 4) for the three gentrification pressure indices: retiree migration, urban sprawl, and housing disruption.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Museum To Host Conversation On Woods Hole Fisheries’ 150th Anniversary

June 4, 2021 — “Celebrating 150 Years of Science at the Woods Hole Fisheries Lab” will be the topic of Woods Hole Historical Museum’s online Conversation on Wednesday, June 9, at 7 PM with Jon Hare, science and research director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries, founded as the U. Commission of Fish and Fisheries in 1871, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. The Woods Hole Laboratory is the nation’s first marine research station, and is the founding laboratory of NOAA Fisheries, formally called the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Jon Hare has been the science and research director of the Woods Hole Fisheries since October 2016. He oversees science activities related to the Fisheries mission in the northeast region, including fisheries, aquaculture, protected species, habitat, and ecosystem science. He received a PhD in coastal oceanography from State University of New York Stony Brook. He was awarded a National Research Council Research Associateship in 1994 to work at NOAA’s Beaufort Laboratory and was hired by the agency in 1997.

Read the full story at The Enterprise

2021 Atlantic Cod Stock Structure Workshops

May 25, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The New Hampshire Sea Grant, New England Fishery Management Council, and NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center will be hosting a series of workshops on Atlantic cod from June 1-July 1.

This four-part series will focus on the science driving the decision to split Atlantic cod stocks into five distinct biological stocks, instead of the two that are currently managed. Stemming from the 2020 report by the Atlantic Cod Stock Structure Working Group, this series will focus on the current science and management approaches to this fishery.

Presentations by technical experts will be followed by an open public discussion ensuring information is available to best inform the cod stock assessment process. There will be a follow-up series on the management implications of this split.

Registration is required to participate.

Deadline Extended: ASMFC Still Seeks Proposals for At-Sea Monitoring Trainers

May 14, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, in cooperation with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) to conduct components of the At-Sea Monitoring (ASM) Training Program for the center. The submission deadline has been extended to May 24, 2021.

NOAA Fisheries is required to collect biological and compliance data aboard U.S. domestic fishing vessels, data which cannot be obtained at the dock or on research vessels. Specifically, observer data is essential to reliably estimating catch and bycatch, and in helping to implement programs to reduce bycatch. A sharp increase to the coverage rate (up to 100%) for the Northeast Multispecies Fishery in Fishing Year 2022 and observer attrition during the 2020 fishing year have resulted in the need for approximately 140 new at-sea monitors.

The awardee shall provide and retain the necessary qualified personnel, materials, equipment, services, and facilities to conduct components of the ASM training for the Center. The Awardee shall conduct approximately 4-6 trainings per year. The training will be conducted as a collaborative effort between NOAA Fisheries and the Awardee; where some components of the training will be conducted by the Awardee and some training components will be conducted by NOAA Fisheries.

Application Instructions

Applicants seeking to apply to the RFP must submit, as a single file, an electronic proposal by email no later than 5:00 p.m. EST on May 24, 2021. Please see the RFP online for complete proposal details, qualifying requirements, and submission instructions.

For More Information:

Please contact Deke Tompkins at dtompkins@asmfc.org or (313) 303-2623.

Press contact: Tina Berger, (703) 842-0740

Submission Deadline for Proposals to Conduct Components of the At-Sea Monitoring Training Program Extended to May 24, 2021

May 13, 2021 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), is extending the submission deadline for proposals to conduct components of the At-Sea Monitoring (ASM) Training Program for the NEFSC. The deadline is extended until May 24, 2021 (previously May 19, 2021). The complete Request for Proposals (RFP) can be found here. For more information, please contact Deke Tompkins at dtompkins@asmfc.org.