Saving Seafood

Wildlife NGOs urge Canadian gov’t to expand right whale protection

November 5, 2018 — Wildlife protection groups, led by the Centre for Biological Diversity (CBD), have submitted recommendations to the Canadian government urging them to uphold and expand the existing protections for the North Atlantic right whale, a press release said.

The measures put in place this year to outlaw forms of entanglement fishing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence followed the news that 12 right whales had died in Canadian waters in 2017. The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) responded by closing key fishing areas in the gulf, including the entanglement-prone snow crab fishery.

Aside from the recommendation to expand the protected area, the letter also requested that all Atlantic Canadian fisheries have marked equipment, enabling the owners of entanglement gear to be identified; and make the transition from trap/pot fisheries to ropeless gear.

“The right whale population is plummeting as these incredible animals continue to get entangled in Canadian and US fishing gear,” said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the CBD.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News 

 

Navy to limit sonar, explosions in more areas off East Coast to protect endangered whales

November 1, 2018 — The Navy is expanding the area it limits the use of sonar and explosives off the East Coast as part of an effort to help protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The whales were nearly hunted into extinction by the 1890s and today there are only about 450 left, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

While the biggest modern day threats to the whales are entanglement in fishing gear and direct strikes from vessels, underwater noise pollution can interfere with their communication and affect their behavior, the fisheries service said.

The large black whales travel between New England in the warm months to feed and mate and south to Florida to have their offspring in winter. They’re recognizable by their lack of a dorsal fin, broad tails and raised patches of rough skin on their heads. Occasionally, they roam in the same areas that submarines, warships and helicopters that use sonar or deploy torpedoes or other explosives train and operate in.

To comply with federal laws protecting marine mammals and endangered species, the Navy works with the fisheries service to reduce its impacts through mitigation areas. In the northeast, the mitigation area is expanding to include the right whale’s entire critical habitat area to limit the use of sonar and explosives.

Read the full story at The Virginian Pilot

Canada looking to add flexibility to right whale protection measures

October 30, 2018 — Canadian authorities are seeking to add greater flexibility to fishing regulations put in place to protect critically endangered North American right whales.

At an industry roundtable in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on Tuesday, 23 October, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Coast Guard (DFO) Jonathan Wilkinson signaled a willingness to lessen the severe restrictions placed on various fisheries in 2018 to protect the whales.

In 2017, the death of 12 right whales in Canadian waters prompted DFO to impose extreme measures on fishing, shipping, and maritime traffic for the 2018 season. No right whales died in Canadian waters during this period, and the stiff measures kept Canada’s fishery on the right side of U.S. marine mammal protection legislation, which helped maintain access to U.S. markets for Canadian suppliers. However, fishermen said the closures cost them millions of dollars.

In recent months, regulators, scientists, and fishermen have worked together to find an accommodation in procedures for protecting the right whales. As a result of this work, a new pilot project has been proposed for the Grand Manan lobster fishery. In 2018, the sighting of a single right whale caused a 15-day shutdown of the fishery. For 2019, it will be sufficient for the Grand Manan lobster fishermen to cut their trailing buoy when a right whale is spotted.

New Brunswick Crab fishermen, who work in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are hoping this potential new flexibility extends to them. Martin Noel of New Brunswick’s Acadian Crab Fishermen’s Association said his group supported that avenue.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

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