Saving Seafood

  • Home
  • News
    • Alerts
    • Conservation & Environment
    • Council Actions
    • Economic Impact
    • Enforcement
    • International & Trade
    • Law
    • Management & Regulation
    • Regulations
    • Nutrition
    • Opinion
    • Other News
    • Safety
    • Science
    • State and Local
  • News by Region
    • New England
    • Mid-Atlantic
    • South Atlantic
    • Gulf of Mexico
    • Pacific
    • North Pacific
    • Western Pacific
  • About
    • Contact Us
    • Fishing Terms Glossary

Canada announces changes to protect right whales

January 24, 2018 — NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada — Canadian officials announced new restrictions Tuesday on the amount of rope that snow crab fishermen can use in an ongoing effort to reduce the effect of fishing on the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.

“We don’t want meters and meters of rope floating on the surface of the water,” Fisheries and Oceans Canada Minister Dominic LeBlanc said.

With 450 or fewer right whales remaining, after the death last year of 16 in Canadian and U.S. waters, and a possible 17th death still under review, pressure is increasing on two ways that humans cause right whale deaths: fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes. Last week, U.S. conservation groups sued the National Marine Fisheries Service to tighten restrictions on lobster fishing to protect the whales.

A roundtable on right whales, convened by LeBlanc last November, with fishing and marine business people, environmental groups, indigenous community members, scientists and Canadian and U.S. government officials, led to a more thorough understanding of the situation, according to a statement from the Fisheries Service and Oceans Canada.

LeBlanc’s announcement Tuesday was about four initial changes in snow crab fishing policy and practices to better protect right whales, 12 of which were documented as being found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. More initiatives to limit entanglement and ship strikes are likely to come, he said.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said biologist Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, of LeBlanc’s announcement. “To me it all hinges on what comes next. This in and of itself isn’t enough.”

New England Aquarium research scientist Heather Pettis agreed, saying the first steps looked promising and appeared to show that LeBlanc understood the urgency of the problem.

“We’re digesting it all and looking at how each of these four measures are going to help protect this population,” said Pettis, who is the administrator for the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, a research collaborative.

The primary limit LeBlanc set on snow crab fishing is to allow no more than 12 feet, or 3.7 meters, of floating rope between a snow crab trap’s primary buoy and its secondary buoy, which is expected to “massively” reduce line in Canadian snow crab fishing areas, LeBlanc said.

Of six right whale necropsies completed by Oct. 5 in Canada, two deaths were attributed to entanglement and four to ship strikes.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

A new model for right whale estimates

New system confirms population decline as another death is reported in Canada.

September 21, 2017 — NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada — Another North Atlantic right whale death in Canadian waters has brought further attention to the threat of fishing gear to the endangered marine mammals.

“It’s considered a severe entanglement,” New England Aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse said of the dead female, believed to be around 3 years old. Fishing rope and gear, including a snow crab pot, entangled the pale, deeply cut carcass, estimated to be 36 feet long.

The right whales, which frequent Cape Cod waters in late winter and early spring, are among the rarest whales in the world, with 524 estimated in 2015 in a report by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. The death brought the total fatalities this year to 14, representing about 3 percent of the population.

The carcass was spotted by airplane surveyors Friday off Miscou Island, New Brunswick. The dead whale was towed to the island Monday, and a necropsy was performed Tuesday.

“The key thing is that the animal was entangled,” said Tonya Wimmer of the Marine Animal Response Society in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Recent Headlines

  • A data-driven model to help avoid ecosystem collapse
  • Trump reverses course on salmon restoration in the Pacific Northwest
  • Researchers make alarming discovery after analyzing stomach of deep-sea fish that washed ashore on US coast: ‘They are not picky eaters’
  • Keeping a labor force in the pipeline
  • At U.N. Conference, Countries Inch Toward Ocean Protection Goal
  • CALIFORNIA: California to shutter last open Dungeness crab fishing zones
  • Responsible Fishery Management is a Powerful Tool to Conserve Our Ocean
  • Commercial fishers, conservation groups sue to block Empire Wind offshore energy development

Most Popular Topics

Alaska Aquaculture ASMFC Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission BOEM California China Climate change Coronavirus COVID-19 Donald Trump groundfish Gulf of Maine Gulf of Mexico Hawaii Illegal fishing IUU fishing Lobster Maine Massachusetts Mid-Atlantic National Marine Fisheries Service National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NEFMC New Bedford New England New England Fishery Management Council New Jersey New York NMFS NOAA NOAA Fisheries North Atlantic right whales North Carolina North Pacific offshore energy Offshore wind Pacific right whales Salmon South Atlantic Western Pacific Whales wind energy Wind Farms

Daily Updates & Alerts

Enter your email address to receive daily updates and alerts:
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Tweets by @savingseafood

Copyright © 2025 Saving Seafood · WordPress Web Design by Jessee Productions