Saving Seafood

Solving a mystery: How researchers found missing North Atlantic right whales

December 27, 2021 — Until recently, researchers tracking the well-being of the world’s most endangered great whale could count on North Atlantic right whales showing up in several key areas at certain times of the year seeking food, love, or a safe place to give birth.

In winter and early spring, a large portion of right whales could be found in Cape Cod Bay feeding on copepods, their favorite food. They then moved to the Bay of Fundy for summer feeding, where New England Aquarium researchers had been studying them since the 1980s.

But in 2010, and in the years to follow, they went missing. Although they still showed up in Cape Cod Bay, for the past decade the Bay of Fundy has been largely a right whale ghost town. The same was true for the Great South Channel east of Cape Cod and the northern edge of Georges Bank.

It took a combination of detective work and luck to eventually find them — and where they ended up dramatically altered the landscape for whale survival and fisheries management.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MAINE: Whale rules, pending lawsuits focus of gloomy Advisory Council meeting

December 23, 2021 — A complicated and potentially grim future is predicted for the commercial lobster industry, with environmental groups, gear changes, the closure of offshore waters to lobster fishing and judicial rulings painting a “doom and gloom” picture, in the words of Department of Marine Resources (DMR) Commissioner Patrick Keliher. 

“I think there’s going to be a lot of moving pieces,” Keliher told Lobster Advisory Council members and others in virtual attendance at the council’s Dec. 15 meeting.  

Some of those pieces could spell the end of the commercial lobster fishery in Maine, DMR Deputy Commissioner Meredith Mendelson said, as she ran through the current lawsuits aimed at preserving the North Atlantic right whale. If any or all prevail, the lobster fishery will bear the brunt of the results. 

These days, lobstering is all about the right whale population, of which an estimated 336 whales – the lowest number in nearly 20 years – swam in the Atlantic Ocean in 2020. Right whales were listed as an endangered species in 1970 and became protected when the Endangered Species Act of 1973 was later passed. 

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Hearings set for new electronic lobster boat tracking rules

December 20, 2021 — Interstate fishing managers are holding a series of public hearings next month about a plan to implement electronic tracking for lobster boats.

An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering implementing the tracking requirements for lobster and Jonah crab boats that have federal permits. Regulators have said the requirement could help protect rare North Atlantic right whales and give scientists more information about the lobster and crab population.

The lobster industry is facing a host of new rules to protect the right whales, which number less than 350 and are vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear.

The virtual hearings will be for specific states or regional in nature.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Times

Viewpoint: Help Maine lobstermen fight unfair federal rules

December 15, 2021 — No one ever said that life was fair. But the 10-year plan put forth in August by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales is so obviously unfair and, to make matters worse, based on bad science, that the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) has sued the federal government because of it. If this flawed plan remains in place the Maine lobster fishery could be erased within a decade, decimating the precious coastal communities where we live and work. 

The plan’s goal is to reduce risk to the whales from lobster gear by 60 percent right now, then by another 60 percent in 2025, and a final 87 percent in 2030, resulting in a 98 percent reduction in the already minimal risk that lobstermen pose to the whales. That does not leave much, if any, room for a viable lobster fishery in this state. 

The MLA contends that NMFS got it wrong. The best available science does not support the agency’s plan and instead, the government needs to come up with a plan that will protect the whales without sinking the lobster industry. 

We care about protecting the whales. Since 1997, Maine lobstermen have taken many actions to protect right whales from entanglement. We’ve put in place measures such as removing thousands of miles of rope from the water, keeping rope off the surface where a whale might feed, putting weak links in our rope so that a whale can break free, and marking our lines so we know if Maine lobster gear is responsible for an entanglement. These measures have worked. The right whale population had doubled in two decades. 

More importantly, no right whale has been known to become entangled in Maine lobster gear since 2004. No right whale has ever died from Maine lobster gear. 

Read the full op-ed at the Mount Desert Islander

Despite calls for ‘ropeless’ fishing gear, Maine lobstermen have doubts

December 14, 2021 — The elimination of fishing lines that run from lobster traps on the Gulf of Maine’s seafloor to marker buoys on the water’s surface is increasingly being sought as a way to help save the estimated 336 endangered North Atlantic right whales left in the world. But Maine lobstermen are skeptical.

Lobster industry officials say that the technology currently isn’t commercially viable and questioned if it’s really necessary in Maine, where whale sightings are rare.

“I think some people are probably contemplating it and some people can’t ever imagine it ever working,” Patrice McCarron, the head of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said.

McCarron emphasized that each fisherman is their own individual business and when it comes to testing out the gear, they have to make decisions based on what’s best for them.

Ropeless gear gets rid of the persistent vertical fishing line that can entangle whales and other species. Alternatives include gear that releases a buoy to the surface and others that fill a bag with air, floating the traps up to a waiting boat.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

As the legal battle continues, lobstermen fear new federal closure could hurt industry long-term

December 10, 2021 — The battle over new federal restrictions designed to save the endangered North Atlantic right whale is far from settled.

It has been just over a week since at least 150 lobstermen had to get their traps out of a nearly 1,000-square-mile swath of the Gulf of Maine following a judge’s order.

“It’s too bad that Maine fishermen are really getting a bad rap,” Larabee said. “They’re all stressed. They’ve been pushed back. Where do you go?”

On this day, he and his two-man crew are fishing just outside of LMA 1, the zone now closed to fishing from October 18 through January 31 each year.

Some, including the state’s lobster unions, have claimed the closure by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration falls during the peak fishing season.

According to data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources, lobstermen statewide hauled most consistently from July-October last year. They brought in a whopping 20 million pounds in October at peak, before numbers steadily fell back down through January.

DMR officials estimate the closure will have a $2 to $4 million impact on fishermen alone.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

After Supreme Court rejects appeal, lobstering union vows to continue fight

December 7, 2021 — The Supreme Court on Friday turned down a request by the Maine Lobstering Union and others to end a closure of lobstering waters off the state’s coast.

The union, Damon Family Lobster Co. Inc., Fox Island Lobster Co. LLC and Frank Thompson had filed an emergency injunction application on Wednesday with the court, seeking to halt enforcement of an earlier ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

That decision had stayed one by the U.S. District Court for Maine to stop a new four-month closure of 967 square miles of the Gulf of Maine to lobster fishing.

The developments all stem from a plan, issued by the Fisheries Service on Aug. 31, that aims to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale by creating new requirements affecting Maine lobstermen. In addition to the October-through-January ban on lobster fishing with buoy lines, implemented for the first time this year, the plan includes mandates for additional gear marking and gear modification.

Read the full story at Mainebiz

 

These whales are so decimated that a single birth was cheered by scientists

December 6, 2021 — In the ocean off South Carolina, researchers spotted something attached to Slalom the North Atlantic right whale, and for once, it was a good thing. She had a baby.

A sigh of relief spread across the community of Atlantic whale watchers who know critically endangered right whales are as likely to die as they are to give birth. On her path to motherhood at age 39, Slalom — named for a series of callous-like patches on her head that swoop like a ski slope — has survived at least six fishing net entanglements that are known to kill whales.

Over the past decade, the right whale population fell from more than 500 in 2010 to about 335, largely because of entanglements, boat strikes and slicing propellers. Fewer than 100 adult females remain. By comparison, endangered southern right whales that swim between Australia and South America number in the thousands.

“If you look at a graphic of what the North Atlantic right whale population looks like, it can seem like there’s no hope. It’s really alarming how quickly the population has declined in the last 10 years,” Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist for the New England Aquarium, said in an interview Friday.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Supreme Court keeps limits on lobster fishing in Maine to protect rare right whales

December 6, 2021 — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday against Maine lobster fishermen who sought to block new fishing restrictions that are designed to protect rare whales.

The new rules make an approximately 950-square-mile area of the Gulf of Maine essentially off limits to lobster fishing from October to January. That’s to protect North Atlantic right whales, which are one of the rarest whales and number less than 340.

Members of Maine’s lobster fishing industry asked the high court to block the new restrictions after an appeals court ruled that the closure was legal. Justice Stephen Breyer rejected the appeal on Friday without comment, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court said.

The Maine Lobstering Union and others have argued that the restrictions will hurt the fishing industry economically. The restrictions are intended to protect the whales from lethal entanglement in fishing gear. That’s one of the biggest threats to their existence.

Read the full story from the AP at the Boston Globe

Maine’s lobster industry is in a fight for its survival

December 6, 2021 — Friday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold reinstatement of a 967-square-mile lobster fishing closure is another devastating blow to Maine lobstermen.

In October, a U.S. District Court judge in Bangor had ruled that there was reason to question the federal government’s decision to close this prime lobstering area for four months this winter. When an appeals court overturned this decision in November, lobstermen who had already set traps in this area were forced to dangerously hurry and take them up, creating economic hardship for those who invested in gear, rigged up and were already fishing in these productive waters.

For Maine’s lobster industry, this is another frustrating example of one step forward, two steps back. This latest court ruling, however, is just the tip of the iceberg that threatens to sink the fishery.

Earlier this year, the National Marine Fisheries Service released a 10-year plan intended to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The problem is that the government’s plan won’t protect the right whale. And the Maine lobster fishery could be eliminated as collateral damage.

Under the fisheries service’s plan, Maine lobstermen are required to reduce risk to right whales by 98 percent by 2030. But, according to the fisheries service’s own data, the closure of nearly 1,000 miles of lobstering grounds in the Gulf of Maine for a third of the year is only responsible for about 6.5 percent of that. It’s unbelievable that even after implementing a closure of this size and scale, with all its devastating economic impacts, we will still somehow be required to reduce our risk by another 91.5 percent.

Read the full op-ed at the Bangor Daily News