Saving Seafood

NOAA scientists admit a gaffe on risk to whales of lobster trap lines

October 29, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Late last month, the NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center released a “technical memorandum” suggesting that expensive efforts by Maine lobstermen aimed at reducing the risk that endangered North Atlantic right whales and other large whales would become entangled in vertical buoy lines had backfired.

According to the memorandum, issued just before a weeklong meeting of NOAA’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team in Providence, R.I., to consider possible changes to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan, when the industry increased the number of traps trawled together and marked by a single buoy line, lobstermen began using stronger rope. That worsened the entanglement problem.

The memorandum seemed to offer support for calls by some conservation groups for the use of even fewer vertical buoy lines, weaker ropes and the development of a “ropeless fishery” with traps that used a remote device to release a submerged buoy when it was time to raise the gear.

In a letter addressed to NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center Director Jon Hare, Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher blasted the memorandum, expressing “significant concerns about the scientific merit” of the data and research on which it was based.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

 

Right Whales Could Drop to Levels Unseen Since 1990

October 23, 2018 — Scientists say the population of North Atlantic right whales could decline to levels not seen since 1990 in as few as 12 years.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which manages coastal fisheries, received an update on the status of the whales on Monday. The whales are among the most endangered marine mammals and are thought to number only about 437.

The population was only 268 in 1990 before it rebounded to a recent high of 481 around 2010. But the species has been hindered by poor reproduction and several years of high mortality since then.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Third right whale death confirmed by NOAA

October 18, 2018 — According to the federal government, the North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species, with only an estimated 450 remaining. As of this year, there are at least three fewer.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration vessel on Sunday reported a sighting of a whale carcass floating about 100 miles east of Nantucket. NOAA reviewed photos provided by experts and determined it was a North Atlantic right whale.

“The carcass is severely decomposed, but photographs show multiple wounds indicative of human interaction,” according to NOAA. “The initial examination revealed marks consistent with entanglement. However, at this stage it is too early to speculate on the cause of the death.”

With the help of the U.S. Coast Guard, the whale carcass was found early Monday afternoon.

The crew of NOAA’s fisheries research ship Henry B. Bigelow took additional photos and samples that will be used to more precisely identify and learn more about the whale, according to NOAA.

Northern right whales have been listed as endangered since 1970. About 4 percent of the animal’s population died in 2017. No new calves were spotted this year.

According to NOAA, commercial whalers by the 1890s had “hunted right whales in the Atlantic to the brink of extinction.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD: Proposed lobster rules not based on science

October 16, 2018 — A scientific paper that called for stricter regulations on Maine’s lobster fishery to protect endangered right whales plainly illustrates a two-sided problem.

We need policymakers who will rely on science. And they need science that they can rely on. If either side of the equation is missing, nothing works.

When we talk about climate change, we are used to politicians who ignore the science. But this time, it was the scientists who let us down.

A report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in advance of a big regulatory conference singled out stronger ropes, which, they said, are being used by Maine lobstermen and are entangling whales as they migrate through Maine waters.

The report’s authors proposed more gear changes and possible closures in some areas to respond to a rising number of whale deaths. They attributed the fatal entanglements to an unintended consequence of earlier regulations, which limited the number of vertical lines in the water, thus requiring longer strings of traps. “While this reduced the number of lines, it also meant that lines had to be stronger to accommodate the increased load of multiple traps,” the report’s authors wrote.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

With right whales at risk of extinction, regulators consider drastic action that could affect lobstermen

October 16, 2018 — With North Atlantic right whales increasingly at risk of extinction, federal regulators are considering drastic protection measures that could have sweeping consequences for the region’s lucrative lobster industry.

The species is in dangerous decline, with a record 17 right whale deaths and no recorded births last year, and entanglements in fishing gear are believed to be the leading cause of premature deaths. Three have died in US waters this year, including one 35-foot-long whale found Sunday about 100 miles east of Nantucket, federal officials said.

In an effort to protect the dwindling species, regulators last week hosted a series of often emotional meetings with fishermen, environmental advocates, and other federal and state officials about what to do.

The goal is to find a way to protect the whales while limiting the impact on lobstermen, who have hundreds of thousands of fishing lines that extend from their traps on the seafloor to their buoys on the surface of the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Report ‘erodes trust’ for lobstermen

October 15, 2018 — A new federal report on right whales was intended to set the stage for a weeklong meeting of groups trying to save the endangered species, but a lack of documentation for one of its central claims left the fishing industry feeling unfairly targeted.

Lobstermen accused the Northeast Fisheries Science Center of incompetence after it claimed a 2015 rule requiring fishermen to reduce the number of surface-to-seabed ropes had prompted some fishermen to start using stronger rope, which poses a bigger threat to whales.

“While this reduced the number of lines, it also meant that lines had to be stronger to accommodate the increased load of multiple traps,” the report reads. “This natural adaptation … contributed to an increase in the severity of entanglements.”

The lobster industry jumped on this sentence in the 24-page report, saying the center had no data to back it up, and knew it. Its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, gave Maine a $700,000 grant to collect this kind of data in April.

“You have an agency who’s been managing you for over 20 years fundamentally not understanding your fishery, publishing a technical memo that, quite frankly, felt more like an opinion piece,” said Patrice McCarron, director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

Such mistakes make it difficult for industry leaders to persuade constituents to participate in surveys like the one Maine is conducting if they believe federal regulators already believe the Maine lobster industry is to blame for the decline of the right whale population.

Read the full story at the Sun Journal

Advisory group grapples with right whale protection measures

October 15, 2018 — A week of meetings about how commercial fishermen could reduce harm to the imperiled North Atlantic right whales ended Friday with an immediate focus on exploring more temporary area closures with possible testing of new technologies, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries biologist Colleen Coogan, an organizer of the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team.

“There was extremes on both ends,” Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association president Arthur Sawyer said of pitches made at the monthly take reduction team meeting in Providence, Rhode Island.

Interest seemed to land on the possibilities of weaker rope, with 1,700 pounds as maximum breaking strength. That could allow right whales to break free of entanglements more easily, Sawyer said. “That was kind of middle of the road,” he said, and might be able to be put in place in the near future, although it might not be useful in deep water.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Ropes are latest flashpoint in tug of war over endangered right whales

October 15, 2018 — The lobster industry is willing to consider switching to weaker rope to protect the endangered right whale from deadly entanglements, but whale defenders say that doesn’t go far enough to help a species that can’t bear even one more death.

A team of scientists, regulators, animal rights groups and fishermen met this week in Providence to review proposals to help a species that has dwindled to about 450 individuals after coming back from the brink of extinction.

The team is advising the National Marine Fisheries Service on how to prevent whales from getting entangled in fishing gear as they migrate, feed and mate as they travel back and forth along the East Coast of the United States and Canada.

The team agreed on a lot of measures that could help them understand why the whales are dying, like putting distinctive marks on all fishing gear so regulators can know which fisheries pose the biggest threat, but not on how to actually stop entanglement deaths.

Led by Maine regulators and fishermen, the lobster industry agreed Friday to explore weaker vertical lines – the rope that links seabed traps to a surface buoy – in areas where whales gather in numbers or eat, an act that puts them at greater risk of a fatal entanglement.

Rope strength limits would represent “a giant step forward,” lobster industry officials said.

“We pushed ourselves way beyond our comfort zones to present this idea with a bow on it,” said Patrice McCarron, director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “Let’s get the low-hanging fruit and find gear that we could actually fish and get in the water.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Whale protection, trawl limits entangle Maine lobstermen

October 10, 2018 — DEER ISLE, Maine — October is a peak month, according to the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, for feistiness in Maine’s population of hornets and wasps. Lobstermen too, judging by last week’s meeting of the Zone C Lobster Management Council at Deer Isle-Stonington High School.

The principal irritant is the still-simmering conflict over a rule adopted by DMR at the beginning of August establishing a five-trap maximum trawl limit for a 60-square-mile rectangle centered, more or less, on Mount Desert Rock.

The trawl limit was proposed by the Zone B management council last winter. The problem is that much of the western part of that area is fished by lobstermen based in Zone C — primarily Stonington and Deer Isle — who bitterly opposed adoption of a rule that Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher called “one of the more difficult decisions that I have made.”

Last week, the Zone C council reviewed a proposed rule change that would eliminate the five-trap maximum in a large area west of Mount Desert Rock. While that might improve the situation for some Zone C lobstermen, the underlying problem reflects unhappiness on the part of lobstermen from Zone B, with limited entry for new fishermen, over the number of lobstermen from Zone C who fish across the zone line in waters they fished before the zones were ever established.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

 

In Changing Climate, Endangered Right Whales Find New Feeding Grounds

October 10, 2018 — Amy Knowlton pilots the 29-foot research vessel Nereid out of Lubec harbor and into the waters of the Bay of Fundy, off of easternmost Maine. A scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life Knowlton points to harbor porpoises chasing fish in the wind-swept waters on a recent morning.

Then something much larger appears off the stern.

“Whale behind us,” Knowlton says, steering closer. “It’s probably a humpback or fin whale, we’ll get a better look.”

It turns out to be two humpback whales — a cool sighting, but not the kind she is after.

Knowlton is hoping to find the endangered North Atlantic right whales that she and her colleagues have been studying in these waters since 1980.

Right whales are large cetaceans, with big heads and no dorsal fins. Researchers used to count as many as 200 foraging here in late summer. But the whales became scarce starting in 2010, and their range shifted dramatically. Many more are now summering hundreds of miles north, off Canadian shores in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. More than 130 have been spotted there in recent months.

Marianna Hagbloom, a research assistant on Knowlton’s team, surveyed that area in August and said it was nothing like the Bay of Fundy.

“We had days where we were seeing about 50 individuals,” Hagbloom says. “Just right whales popping up left and right. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Read the full story at NPR