Saving Seafood

Reminder: Historic Shipwreck Avoidance on Stellwagen Bank

March 25, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries, in conjunction with NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, requests that vessels avoid shipwreck sites on southern Stellwagen Bank within the Sanctuary by keeping gear 400 feet away from each of the site locations listed below.  We recognize that fishermen want to avoid shipwrecks to ensure the safety of the crew and because of the risks of damaging their gear when the gear gets hung up on a wreck or other objects on the ocean floor.  Hanging up on a wreck can also cause serious damage to shipwrecks that have historical significance.

For more information read the permit holder bulletin posted on our website.

Read the full release here

NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary seeks advisory council applicants

June 10, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary is seeking applicants for six primary and five alternate seats on its advisory council. The council ensures public participation in sanctuary management and provides advice to the sanctuary superintendent.

The sanctuary is accepting applications for the following seats: at large (two primary and one alternate), business industry (one primary and one alternate), conservation (one primary and one alternate), education (one alternate), marine transportation (alternate), mobile gear commercial fishing (primary), and research (one primary).

The application period opened on June 1. Completed applications are due by June 30, 2020. Applications received or postmarked after June 30 will not be considered. To receive an application or for further information, please contact Elizabeth Stokes at 781-546-6004 or by mail at 175 Edward Foster Road, Scituate, MA 02066. Applications can also be downloaded from the Sanctuary’s website.

Applicants accepted as members should expect to serve a three-year term. The advisory council consists of 36 primary and alternate members representing a variety of public interest groups. It also includes seven seats representing other federal and state government agencies.

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary’s Advisory Council actively recruits for new members and alternates when positions are available. Check their website frequently for updates on how you can help manage New England’s only national marine sanctuary.

Read the full release here

Reminder: Historic Shipwreck Avoidance on Stellwagen Bank

April 9, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries, in conjunction with NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, requests that vessels avoid shipwreck sites on southern Stellwagen Bank within the Sanctuary by keeping gear 400 feet away from each of the site locations listed below.

We recognize that fishermen want to avoid shipwrecks to ensure the safety of the crew and because of the risks of damaging their gear when the gear gets hung up on a wreck or other objects on the ocean floor.  Hanging up on a wreck can also cause serious damage to shipwrecks that have historical significance.

For more information read the permit holder bulletin posted on our website.

Read the full release here

NOAA Seeks Public Comment on Revised Management Plan for Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary

February 14, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries has released the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Condition Report. Condition reports summarize resources and ecosystem services within a national marine sanctuary, pressures on those resources, current conditions and trends, and management responses to the pressures.

The Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Condition Report indicates that water quality in the sanctuary is good, but habitat, living resources, and maritime heritage resources continue to experience human impacts (vessel traffic, fishing, marine debris, ocean noise) and climate change. The condition report also includes an assessment of the sanctuary’s ecosystem services, which are benefits that people obtain from the environment, such as seafood and recreation.

The release of the condition report will initiate the review and revision of the management plan for Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Public scoping is the first phase in the revision process, and the public can comment through April 10, 2020, on the scope of issues and programs to be considered within an updated plan. Comments may be submitted online, by mail, or in person at the public scoping meetings.

WHAT:

Public scoping meetings and public comment period through April 10 to solicit input on the scope of issues and programs to be considered within an updated management plan for Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

WHEN and WHERE:

  • March 11, 6:30-8 p.m., New England Aquarium, Harborside Learning Lab,1 Central Wharf, Boston, MA 02110
  • March 12, 6:30-8 p.m., Maritime Gloucester, 23 Harbor Loop, Gloucester, MA 01930
  • March 18, 6:30-8 p.m., Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Admiral’s Hall,101 Academy Dr, Buzzards Bay, MA 02532

HOW TO COMMENT:

Online: Go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal and use docket number NOAA-NOS-2020-0003.

By mail:

NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary
175 Edward Foster Road
Scituate, MA 02066
Attn: Management Plan Revision

Stellwagen Bank NMS seeking advisory council applications – Due Nov 30

November 7, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary is seeking applicants for three primary and four alternate seats on its Sanctuary Advisory Council. The SAC ensures public participation in sanctuary management and provides advice to the sanctuary’s superintendent. The sanctuary is accepting applications for the following seats:

  • Business Industry (Alternate)
  • Conservation (Primary)
  • Education (Alternate)
  • Marine Transportation (Primary)
  • Marine Transportation (Alternate)
  • Recreational Fishing (Primary)
  • Whale Watch (Alternate)

Completed applications are due by November 30, 2019.

Applications received or postmarked after this date will not be considered.

Applicants accepted as advisory council members should expect to serve a 3-year term. The advisory council consists of 36 primary and alternate members representing a variety of public interest groups. It also includes seven seats representing other federal and state government agencies.

Download an application or contact Elizabeth Stokes (781-546-6004) for an application or more information.

Get more information about the Office of National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Councils.

Right whale researchers attempt to disentangle ‘Kleenex’

April 17, 2018 — PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — A prolific North Atlantic right whale mother named Kleenex may eventually be freed from fishing line wrapped around her jaw for the past several years after a rescue effort Thursday on Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

“This is exactly the individual we are desperate to help,” said Scott Landry, who leads the center’s efforts to free marine animals from fishing gear.

The adult female, well-known to researchers, had been carrying rope wrapped around her upper jaw for at least three years, according to documented sightings. Because there was no trailing line on the rope, the usual technique of slowing the whale and keeping it at the surface by attaching buoys to the entanglement couldn’t be used, Landry said. Instead, the rescuers used a cutting arrow fired from the deck of the rescue boat to damage the rope on the animal, he said. The weakened rope should deteriorate and be shed by the whale over time, Landry said.

The entanglement of female right whales in fishing gear has been linked to energy depletion and inability of the females to sustain a pregnancy and a year of nursing a calf.

The critically endangered right whales need robust calving to help stop a decline in population that has has been detected since 2010, according to researchers.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Opponents, supporters react to Trump’s offshore drilling plan

February 6, 2018 — Environmentalists, fishermen, and state governments are signaling their opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed plan to reopen the ocean off Cape Cod and New England to oil and gas exploration.

“We are skeptical of anything the Trump Administration is doing in the marine environment or anything they are proposing to do,” said Conservation Law Foundation Vice President Priscilla Brooks.

A 2016 Bureau of Ocean Energy Management report estimated nearly 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 327 trillion tons of natural gas existed in mostly unexplored areas of the U.S. continental shelf. The new push for fossil fuel exploration and recovery was announced Jan. 4 with the unveiling of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Draft Five Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. It is part of President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to make the U.S. more energy independent.

Currently, offshore fossil fuel exploration is controlled by a BOEM plan finalized near the end of the Obama presidency. Obama invoked a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to give what he said would be permanent protection from drilling to the continental shelf from Virginia to Maine.

But there were doubts that Obama’s use of the 1953 law would hold up in court, and the new plan is meant to replace the current one. International Association of Drilling Contractors President Jason McFarland hailed the inclusion of the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic and an expansion of Gulf of Mexico drilling areas as an important step in achieving the goal of U.S. energy dominance in the world.

“IADC has long argued for access to areas that hold potential for oil and gas development,” McFarland wrote in comments last month, citing a U.S. Energy Information Administration estimate of a 48 percent growth in worldwide energy demand over the next 20 years. “The number and scale of the recoverable resources is large, and can lead to thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in investment.”

But the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association and the various fishermen’s associations have panned the proposal. Last week, the New England Fishery Management Council approved a comment letter to BOEM that requested Mid-Atlantic and Northern Atlantic lease areas be excluded from the exploration and drilling.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Can you hear me? NOAA studies boat noise and fish

January 8, 2018 — NOAA scientists studying sounds made by Atlantic cod and haddock at spawning sites in the Gulf of Maine have found that vessel traffic noise is reducing the distance over which these animals can communicate with each other.

As a result, daily behavior, feeding, mating, and socializing during critical biological periods for these commercially and ecologically important fish may be altered, according to a study published in Nature Scientific Reports.

Three sites in Massachusetts Bay included two inside Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a region well known to whale-watchers from the Cape because whales feed in the plankton-rich bank, and one inshore south of Cape Ann. All were monitored for three months by researchers at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, and at the sanctuary offices in Scituate.

Vocalizations, such as Atlantic cod grunts and haddock knocks, were recorded by bottom-mounted instruments at each site during spawning in winter and spring.

“We looked at the hourly variation in ambient sound pressure levels and then estimated effective vocalization ranges at all three sites known to support spawning activity for Gulf of Maine cod and haddock stocks,” said Jenni Stanley, a marine research scientist in the passive acoustics group at the NEFSC and SBNMS and lead author of the study.

“Both fluctuated dramatically during the study. The sound levels appear to be largely driven by large vessel activity, and we found a signification positive correlation with the number of Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracked vessels at two of the three sites.”

AIS is an automatic tracking system, used on ships and by vessel traffic services. It provides information on a vessel, such as its unique identification number, position, course and speed, which can be displayed on a shipboard radar or electronic chart display.

Read the full story at the Wicked Local

 

Boat noise silencing cod, haddock love songs

December 19, 2017 — Communication among cod comes in the form of vocalized grunts. And for haddock, it’s knocks.

Now it appears that increasing traffic noise from large vessels in the Gulf of Maine may be reducing the range of communication for the two species of Atlantic groundfish, according to research by NOAA Fisheries scientists.

The study, undertaken by scientists from NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center and published in Scientific Reports, said the decline in the ability to communicate may generate widespread changes in the species’ “daily behavior, feeding, mating, and socializing during critical biological periods for these commercially and ecologically important fish.”

Cod, for instance, vocalize to attract mates and listen for predators and “not hearing those signals could potentially reduce reproductive success and survival,” according to the study.

Using bottom-mounted instruments to record the cod grunts and haddock knocks, scientists spent three months monitoring the sounds made by the two species at three separate spawning sites within the Gulf of Maine — two inside Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and one inshore south of Cape Ann.

“We looked at the hourly variation in ambient sound pressure levels and then estimated effective vocalization ranges at all three sites known to support spawning activity in the Gulf of Maine cod and haddock stocks,” said Jenni Stanley, a marine research scientist and lead author of the study. “Both fluctuated dramatically during the study.”

The variations of the sound levels, she said, appear to be driven by the activities of large vessels.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times 

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Bluefin tuna seized for size violation donated to homeless shelter

September 14, 2016 — A bluefin tuna was donated to a local homeless shelter after it was seized for a size violation during a routine inspection on Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the Massachusetts Environmental Police said in a Facebook post.

Police were inspecting a fleet of more than 100 tuna ships on the sanctuary Tuesday when officers located a vessel with a 55-inch bluefin tuna onboard, according to police.

The fish was about 18 inches under the required size limit for the ship’s fishing permit category, police said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) asked that officers seize the tuna because of the violation.

Police transported the fish to Boston, where a NOAA officer took possession of it, according to police. The tuna was then donated to a homeless shelter in the area.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe