Saving Seafood

MAINE: Ocean temps full of ‘surprises’ – and not the good kind

October 2, 2019 — Maine fishermen face plenty of challenges including proposed whale protection rules, depredation of the state’s softshell clam stock by invasive green crabs, restrictions on seaweed harvesting and rising operating expenses.

It isn’t only the cost of running a fishing operation that’s rising, though.

Two new, recently published studies report that marine ecosystems around the world are experiencing unusually high ocean temperatures more frequently than researchers previously expected. These warming events, including marine heat waves, are disrupting marine ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, led the study “Challenges to natural and human communities from surprising ocean temperatures,” published in early August. Working with him on the project were researchers from several Maine-based institutions as well as scientists from laboratories in California and Colorado.

Pershing previously identified the Gulf of Maine as one of the most rapidly warming ecosystems in the global ocean. This time around, Pershing and his colleagues examined 65 large marine ecosystems between 1854 and 2018 to identify the frequency of “surprising” ocean temperatures, which they defined as an annual mean temperature substantially above the mean for the previous three decades.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Why Whales Are Worrying Lobstermen in Maine

October 1, 2019 — Along the rocky coast of Maine, lobstermen are worried new federal requirements to clear fishing lines from the path of endangered whales will damage their iconic New England industry.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agency is trying to save North Atlantic right whales that are dying at an alarming rate in U.S. and Canadian waters, often after getting tangled in fishing gear or hit by ships. The still-forming federal regulations will cover other parts of New England, but Maine, where lobstermen dangle more than 800,000 lines from buoys to ocean-floor traps in their busiest months, has the most at stake.

Meeting an aggressive federal target for reducing whale hazards could mean pulling half those lines from the water. The state’s lobster industry and political leaders say this is untenable for the armada of mostly small lobster boats fishing the Gulf of Maine. It also misses the target, they say, since most dead whales have recently turned up in Canada, and none in Maine.

“We’re not unwilling to adapt, we just want to adapt in a way that will actually benefit the species,” said Chris Welch, a 31-year-old lobsterman from Kennebunk, Maine, regarding the whales. “We don’t want to go extinct, either.”

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

MASSACHUSETTS: Truro lobsterman says rules to protect right whales costly to his business

September 30, 2019 — Cheryl Souza is ending her lobster sales after October.

But third-generation lobsterman Billy Souza, as it turns out, is considering quitting as well.

“It’s all the whale issues,” Souza said. Unlike the lobstering in the days of Souza’s grandfather, Frank Souza, and his father, William Souza, the current generation fishing off Cape Cod is under an intense and unique scrutiny. That scrutiny is directly linked to the increasing focus by federal and state regulators on imperiled North Atlantic right whales, which are dying or suffering debilitating injuries due to entanglement in fishing rope.

“We have the whale watch boats here, and we have the Division of Marine Fisheries that does flyovers all the time,” said Souza, 66. “The whales could get entangled anywhere in the world, but there’s so many eyes on them here it looks like we’re the bad guys and we’re not.” On any given early spring day, at least two to three right whale research vessels can be found in Cape Cod Bay, where the whales feed through May and then migrate northward to Canadian waters.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Lobster industry uses video, social media to fight whale regulations

September 26, 2019 — Maine lobstermen and the many businesses that depend on them are anxiously waiting for decisions on new regulations to protect right whales. The proposal for tough new restrictions has had the industry concerned for months.

“Maine lobstermen are extremely worried about the consequence of the whale rules. They have a lot on the line with this,” says Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

Federal officials have said they want the lobster industry to reduce the number of “vertical lines” (ropes) in the water by as much as 60%, to prevent right whales from becoming tangled in them. Lobster industry leaders and others have said over the summer they worry that will dramatically reduce the number of traps, and hurt incomes, or result in having to fish long strings of traps, called trawls, which would be dangerous.

And fishermen have complained for years that they are not the ones posing a threat to the right whales.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Scientists blast Maine lobstermen’s whale safety stance

September 24, 2019 — Eighteen scientists who work in North Atlantic right whale research and rescue have said the Maine lobster industry is “significantly underestimating” the harm their equipment causes.

The scientists have called on the state of Maine to support the National Marine Fisheries Service in developing new rules to protect the whales from lobster gear injuries.

“Reducing entanglement in East Coast waters of the United States is a critical part of a comprehensive strategy for right whale survival and recovery,” Scott Kraus, chief scientist for marine mammals at New England Aquarium’s Anderson Center for Ocean Life, and Mark Baumgartner, associate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and chairman of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, said in a letter Tuesday to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

In addition to Kraus and Baumgartner, other scientists at WHOI and the Anderson Center for Ocean Life in Boston signed the letter, as well as leaders from the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which has an operations center in Yarmouth Port.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Collins proposes reforms to support Maine lobster industry, protect whales

September 23, 2019 — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) proposed changes to federal reforms that would protect whales and support the Maine lobster industry.

Sen. Collins joined her congressional colleagues from Maine in jointly responding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) call for input to develop modifications to the proposed regulations developed by NOAA’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (TRT).

In a letter sent on Tuesday to the NOAA TRT team, the delegation recommended measures that would help reduce right whale fatalities without threatening the lobster industry, including more Maine-specific gear markings, improved monitoring, support for the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ proposal to preserve the current regulatory exemptions line, and the state’s plan to improve data collection.

Read the full story at The Ripon Advance

Dead whale found in LI waters was last seen caught in fishing line, NOAA says

September 20, 2019 — The North Atlantic right whale whose decomposed body was found floating in the waters off Fire Island earlier this week was seen alive last month caught up in fishing line, officials said.

Wounds likely inflicted by plastic rope confirmed he was the rare leviathan seen in the August video. Scientists had previously named him “Snake Eyes” for the twin eye-shaped scars on his head, said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist at Anderson Cabot for Ocean Life at Boston’s New England Aquarium.

The fishing line that may have ended the whale’s life — after he had swum in the Atlantic for more than four decades — ran through his mouth and possibly anchored his tail to the sea bed, Hamilton said.

Read the full story at Newsday

Maine gov, delegation: Whale rules must protect lobstermen

September 19, 2019 — Maine’s most prominent politicians are calling for the federal government to take a new approach to saving an endangered species of whale so protections don’t threaten the state’s lobster industry.

The four members of Maine’s congressional delegation sent recommendations to federal fisheries regulators late Tuesday about how to protect the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers about 400. Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, also called on the government Wednesday to protect whales in a way that keeps lobstering viable.

Read the full story at Sea Coast Online

Right whale found dead this week identified as potentially ‘one of the great fathers of the population’

September 19, 2019 — The North Atlantic right whale found dead this week off Long Island, N.Y., has been identified as a 40-plus-year-old male who had been seen this summer entangled in fishing gear in Canadian waters.

The whale, known to researchers as “Snake Eyes,” was last seen entangled in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in August, after being seen there free of gear in July.

“This is his first sighting since the entanglement,” said Jennifer Goebel, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Scientists at the New England Aquarium called the whale Snake Eyes because of two bright white scars on the front of his head “that look like a pair of eyes when he swam towards you,” they said Wednesday.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Maine regulators to meet with lobstermen again about new whale rules

September 18, 2019 — Maine regulators are working on a new slate of meetings with the state’s lobstermen to discuss potential new whale protection rules that could impact the fishery.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources is developing a proposal for the federal government about how to better protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. It had scheduled several meetings with lobstermen about the proposal for this month, but has temporarily put them on hold.

Department spokesman Jeff Nichols said a revised schedule will be out after regulators have had a chance to develop a proposal that reflects “another review of all data.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News