Saving Seafood

Gulf fish, endangered sea turtles targeted with $210 million for 10 restoration projects

December 9, 2024 — Federal officials have proposed spending $210 million for 10 projects aimed at restoring fisheries, sea turtles and invertebrate species — including shrimp, crabs, reef coral and shellfish — that were damaged during the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in open water areas of the Gulf of Mexico.

The money comes from an $8.8 billion settlement that BP entered into with the federal government and Gulf Coast states in 2016 to try to remediate some of the extensive damage. The settlement set aside $1.2 billion to restore the Gulf’s open water areas, which is what the new draft restoration plan aims to do.

It is the fourth plan by federal trustees to target open ocean resources damaged by the spill. The three previous plans included $421 million for a variety of projects to restore marine mammals, birds, coral reefs and more. Other settlement funds are reserved for projects within the five Gulf Coast states and for projects affecting the entire region.

The new plan includes six projects aimed at restoring fish and invertebrates that live in the Gulf’s water column, and four to help restore sea turtles.

Read the full story at NOLA.com

US shrimpers seek import crackdown over sea turtles

September 5, 2024 — Two U.S. shrimping groups have asked the Biden administration to suspend imports of wild shrimp from Guatemala and Peru, saying the two countries have failed to comply with longstanding State Department requirements to use fishing gear that avoids sea turtle entanglements.

The organizations further argue that lax monitoring and enforcement of international sea turtle protection standards, adopted by Congress in 1989 and enforced under what’s known as the Section 609 program, have allowed a half-dozen other countries to dump illegally caught shrimp into U.S. markets at the expense of sea turtles.

The groups also said the certification program’s rules are applied inconsistently across countries and are poorly enforced. While some major shrimp exporters like India have improved compliance under closer monitoring, many other countries have either not adopted sea turtle protection rules or ignored their enforcement, they said.

Read the full article at E&E News

Feds say finishing Vineyard Wind won’t seriously harm whales — but sea turtle deaths expected

August 28, 2024 — The federal government expects no endangered whales, including North Atlantic right whales, to be killed or seriously injured by the installation of Vineyard Wind’s remaining turbines, but the same is not true for sea turtles.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, has issued a new biological opinion on ways the continued turbine installation could affect threatened and endangered species.

The opinion won’t be published for several days, but in a summary provided to CAI, Greater Atlantic regional spokeswoman Andrea Gomez said the agency anticipates that an average of one sea turtle per year will be struck and killed by a boat associated with Vineyard Wind.

Read the full article at CAI

Texas one of several states included in critical sea turtle habitat proposal

July 31, 2023 — A new proposal aims to protect threatened and endangered sea turtles by preserving their habitat along critical areas of the U.S. coastline.

NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the plan mid-July, proposing 8,870 acres of coastline in California, Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina and Texas be conserved for green sea turtles basking, nesting, incubation, hatching and traveling to sea. The proposition also included the territories of American Samoa, Guam and U.S. Virgin Islands; and the commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico.

Read the full article at KETK

New experiment to test whether ocean warming opens a pathway for sea turtle

July 13, 2023 — Every now and then, small groups of endangered North Pacific loggerhead turtle hatchlings swim from Japan to the coastal waters of Baja Mexico and California, a journey of nearly 8,000 miles that has mystified scientists for decades.

The crux of the mystery is not how loggerheads find their way: Scientists believe they navigate the globe using Earth’s magnetic fields, as do salmon, elephant seals, some species of shark, and other turtle species. Rather, experts have puzzled over how these young, tropical, temperature-sensitive turtles manage to cross a deep-ocean zone that’s cold enough to be nearly impassable for most creatures.

“They go past the point of no return and head toward Baja, when most of the other turtles turn back,” said Stanford marine ecologist Larry Crowder. Now, an international team of scientists has released from a ship on the high seas 25 satellite-tagged turtles in an experiment that could confirm or modify the leading explanation for how they do it. Three more cohorts are planned for release over the next four years, for a total of 100 tagged turtles.

U.S. blocks Mexican fishermen from ports, cites years of illegal fishing in U.S. waters

February 9, 2022 — Along the U.S.-Mexico maritime border, the incursions occur almost daily. The boats are outfitted with small outboard motors, powerful enough to flee pursuing Border Patrol and Coast Guard vessels.

The Mexican skiffs are loaded not with drugs or migrants, but with red snapper, sea turtles and sharks.

U.S. officials say the threat posed by Mexican fishermen casting their nets illegally in U.S. waters has grown so acute that for the first time in years, they’ve banned Mexican fishing vessels from entering U.S. ports.

“These vessels … will be denied port access and services,” said Lauren Gaches, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She said the sanction was being applied in response to Mexico’s “continued failure to combat unauthorized fishing activities by small hulled vessels in U.S. waters.” It took effect Monday.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

NOAA, menhaden industry study turtle interactions

January 20, 2022 — Working with the Gulf of Mexico menhaden fleet, NOAA researchers are working on a methodology for learning about potential sea turtle interactions with purse seines, using a combination of at-sea observers, drones and electronic monitoring cameras on menhaden boats.

One of NOAA’s Gulf Spill Restoration projects – funded by the BP natural resources damage settlement stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion – the turtle study began in 2020 and conducted field trials with industry vessels over five days in October 2021, according to a NMFS summary Jan. 19.

Typically deployed in teams of menhaden steamers with 40-foot seine boats, the fleet harvests menhaden for processing into pet, aquaculture and livestock feeds, fertilizer and fishing bait. In the Gulf of Mexico that brings the possibility of protected sea turtles showing up in nets, but “there isn’t a strong understanding of if and when sea turtles are caught,” according to NMFS.

The project is developing methods for observing those fishing operations to better understand turtle interactions, and to identify how the industry can take voluntary measures to reduce and avoid those occurrences.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

20 endangered sea turtles flown from New England to Florida to avoid freezing

December 13, 2021 — Twenty critically endangered juvenile Kemp’s ridley sea turtles were flown from New England to the subtropical Florida Keys to convalesce at the Marathon Turtle Hospital after being rescued from Cape Cod Bay’s frigid coastal waters.

Each of the turtles suffers from “cold stunning,” a hypothermic reaction that occurs when sea turtles are exposed to cold water for a prolonged time, according to hospital manager Bette Zirkelbach. They arrived Friday by private plane.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

On the Water: A Look at Life as an Observer October 13, 2021

October 18, 2021 — Keenan Carpenter has always loved being on the water. Growing up in Florida, he dreamed of a pro fishing career. Today, you can often find him casting his rod from the beach or on a kayak in his spare time. But as he moved through his studies in marine sciences at Jacksonville University, he found another way to channel his affinity for fishing and his background in sciences—as an observer for NOAA Fisheries.

“I watch what gets taken out of the ocean to ensure there’s more to get taken out later,” Carpenter says of his work. As one of about 850 observers contracted by NOAA Fisheries, Carpenter acts as the agency’s eyes and ears on the water. Observers collect data from commercial fishing vessels on what’s caught and what’s discarded, and track interactions with seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals. The data are critical “puzzle pieces of the whole picture,” as Carpenter says, underpinning the decisions made for sustainable fisheries management.

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

 

NOAA asks for help locating stranded sea turtles

August 30, 2021 — Federal ocean managers are asking beachgoers in New England and elsewhere to keep an eye out for stranded turtles.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office said several species of sea turtle will still be in the area for a few months. Healthy sea turtles normally should not be out of the water in the region, the office said.

The office asked anyone who sees a turtle on the beach to report it. Species that could be spotted include loggerhead, leatherback, green and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, the office said.

Read the full story at the Associated Press