Saving Seafood

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

As right whales surge north, one death too many

June 17, 2019 — Before the leviathan was dragged to shore, before it was found floating at sea trailing a slick of blood, the massive creature had had its run-ins with its greatest nemesis: human beings.

This North Atlantic right whale — among the most endangered species on the planet — was known by researchers as Wolverine, for three propeller cuts on its tailstock that reminded them of the trio of blades used by the comic book character of the same name. In its short life of nine years, journeying through thousands of miles of dense fishing grounds, the whale had endured at least one vessel strike and three entanglements in fishing gear.

Now, Wolverine was decomposing on a grassy beach at the northernmost tip of New Brunswick’s Acadian peninsula, its large, black fins inert in the salty air, its wide fluke tangled in red rope that the Canadian Coast Guard used to haul its carcass in from the frigid waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The death of even one of the mammals poses a grave threat to the species, given how few remain. But almost as notable is that Wolverine was here at all.

Until recently, right whales were seldom seen this far north. Now about a third of the species regularly comes to feed in these frigid waters. It has proved to be a very dangerous migration.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Feature: The Entanglement Tango

June 14, 2019 — Despite an ongoing federal trade war with China imposing tariffs on seafood exports and a looming bait crisis as herring quota were slashed in the Atlantic, Maine’s lobster fleet still managed to haul in crustacean cash. The fleet landed 120 million pounds of lobster worth $484 million in 2018, the fishery’s third-highest annual value ever.

Coming off a profitable year, lobstermen might normally be energized gearing up for the peak summer and fall — but the latest news in the industry’s labored relationship with the Atlantic’s endangered right whale population had them focused on the future of their livelihood instead of the upcoming summer.

In April, NOAA informed the industry that in order to reduce mortality and serious injury to right whales, the U.S. fishing industry would need to reduce risks to whales by 60 to 80 percent throughout New England.

To reach those goals, fishing stakeholders on the federal Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team agreed to attempt a drastic measure: significantly reducing the number of vertical lines used by the region’s lobstermen. In Maine, where thousands of small-scale lobstermen catch the majority of the U.S. lobster haul, that means reducing vertical lines in the water by at least 50 percent.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New restrictions considered to help protect whales off coast of Maine

June 11, 2019 — Dozens of lobstermen showed up for tonight’s meeting at Kennebunk High School.

They say the proposed restrictions are way too tough and could severely hurt Maine’s lobster industry.

The Department of Marine Resources is looking to remove hundreds of lobstermen’s vertical lines from the Gulf of Maine.

These lines are what connect the buoy to the trap.

Experts say right whales, which are near extinction, are getting entangled in them.

Roughly 411 right whales are estimated to be alive today.

While the department confirms no right whale deaths have occurred in the Gulf of Maine, the state still has to play its part due to federal law.

The department says the goal is to reduce the risk of entanglement deaths by sixty percent.

Lobstermen say if right whales aren’t getting hurt in their lines, it shouldn’t be their responsibility.

Read the full story at WGME

Possible whale-protection strategies? Lobster trap reductions, more traps on one line

June 6, 2019 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources is in the midst of a first round of meetings with the lobster industry, to discuss strategies to cope with an expected 50% cut in the number of “endlines” in the water.

Endlines are the vertical lines that connect lobster traps that are on the ocean bottom with a buoy at the sea surface. The buoy identifies where the traps are, and the vertical lines are used to haul up the traps.

The agency is holding the meetings with Maine’s seven Lobster Management Zone Councils during June to facilitate the development of a proposal that meets targets established by the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team for protecting right whales, according to an agency news release.

The team has recommended broad measures for Maine that include removing 50% of vertical lines from the Gulf of Maine and the use of weak rope in the top of remaining vertical lines. The measures put forward by the team are driven by federal laws designed to protect whales. The laws are the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

First dead endangered right whale of 2019 spotted in Canada waters

June 6, 2019 — The first dead critically endangered North Atlantic right whale of 2019 has been spotted in Canada’s Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the fisheries and oceans department said Wednesday.

The ministry said in a release that the animal carcass had been spotted drifting in the channel during an aerial surveillance flight on June 4.

“We are currently assessing the recovery and necropsy options,” it said.

The Canadian government stepped up tracking of right whales after more than a dozen were found dead in 2017 in the busy seaway and off the coast of New England in the United States, which had prompted concern from marine biologists.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

MASSACHUSETTS: Offshore drilling ban gets airing

June 4, 2019 — Trump administration plans to encourage offshore oil and gas drilling are motivating attempts to exempt Massachusetts, and maybe foil the entire scheme.

Lawmakers are weighing a ban on drilling for oil or gas in state waters, as well as a prohibition on the lease of state lands for oil or gas exploration, development or production.

While there are no immediate plans to drill off the New England coast, green groups say the proposal would fend off future efforts by denying access to the state’s land and waters, thus making exploration impractical.

The legislation, which goes before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture on Tuesday, is part of a multi-state effort to thwart President Donald Trump’s plan to open more than 90 percent of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas exploration.

New Jersey, Delaware and California passed offshore drilling bans last year. Similar legislation has been filed in New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Environmentalists say drilling will harm ecosystems and endangered species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, while threatening commercial fishing and tourism businesses.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Warmed waters linked to diminished food for right whales

June 4, 2019 — Overheated waters pouring into the Gulf of Maine from deep ocean reserves along the Atlantic coast appear to be diminishing the food supply on which North Atlantic right whales rely.

A new report from Oceanography says warming temperatures in the gulf are impacting densities of zooplankton, which the whales rely on for food.

The rapid pace of change near the Bay of Fundy, in particular, now indicates that traditional methods of protecting the whales, including protecting their decadeslong feeding areas, may need to be refined.

“Climate change is outdating many of our conservation and management efforts,” said the report’s lead author, Nicholas Record, a senior research scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times