November 12, 2018 — NOAA Fisheries researchers have been looking into how to preserve the shrinking population of critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whales.
Officials have concluded that the surest way of protecting the species is by preserving the lives of adult females in the population as a way to promote population growth and recovery.
According to Royal Society Open Science, most right whale deaths are attributed to entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships.
November 9, 2018 — A group of scientists, conservationists and others is meeting in Massachusetts to brainstorm strategies to save one of the rarest marine mammals on the planet.
It’s the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium’s annual meeting, and it’s wrapping up on Thursday at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford. The right whales number only about 440 and have suffered from high mortality and poor reproduction in recent years.
The meeting began on Wednesday. The agenda includes sessions about everything from the summertime occurrence of the whales in the Bay of Fundy to changes in the abundance of the tiny organisms they need to eat to survive.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Tribune
November 9, 2018 — A gut feeling among North Atlantic right whale experts that the population of the beleaguered animals has dropped to around 400 has been reinforced with a new statistical estimate of 411 animals as of the end of 2017.
“The public shouldn’t think there are exactly 411 whales,” Center for Coastal Studies right whale researcher Charles “Stormy” Mayo said Thursday at the end of the two-day North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium annual meeting in New Bedford. “We believe that they are in the low 400s, or around 400.”
The consortium’s annual report card for the end of 2016 had set the population number at 451, using a statistical model unveiled last year.
The loss of about 40 right whales, under the statistical model, between the end of 2016 and the end of 2017 would include the 12 documented deaths in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada and the five off the Cape and Islands linked in large part to human causes of entanglement in fishing rope and being struck by ships.
“Everyone in the field – conservationists, the public, scientists – continue to be saddened by the decline,” Mayo said. “There’s no question there’s a decline. There’s no question we need to solve the mortality issue.”
The maximum number of human-caused deaths should be no more than one a year to sustain the critically endangered population along the U.S. and Canadian coast, according to a federal stock assessment in September.
U.S. and Canadian government agencies and nonprofit organizations are working to identify the best ways to respond, with new technology to eliminate vertical ropes in the water, for example.
November 6, 2018 — Scientists from the New England Aquarium will spend much of next year testing ropeless lobster gear as part of the escalating effort to mitigate entanglements with right whales and other marine species.
The research project, funded with a $226,616 grant recently received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will involve co-operative research with active lobstermen, possibly including some from the state’s most lucrative lobster port in Gloucester, according to one of the aquarium’s chief scientists.
“We want to get good technology in the hands of fishermen so they can evaluate its potential,” said Tim Werner, the aquarium’s senior scientist and director of its Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. “They need to be able to use it and find out what it needs to be functional.”
Werner said researchers already have begun to develop various types of ropeless traps, using different technologies to achieve the same goal of drastically reducing or eliminating entanglements of leatherback sea turtles and whales in the forest of vertical lines stretching from fishing gear on the ocean floor to the ocean’s surface.
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
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.
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.
October 29, 2018 — One of the smallest, oddest and least-studied fishes in Long Island Sound may be playing a role in attracting one of the world’s largest ocean creatures to the waters along Connecticut’s coastline.
The tiny fish is called a northern sand lance or sand eel, and experts say it could be one of the reasons why massive humpback whales have returned to the Sound in recent years.
Sand lances, at 3 to 6 inches in length, are true fish but look like little silvery eels. They are also a favorite food of humpbacks, which can reach up to 60 feet in length and weigh as much as 40 tons.
“Most people don’t even know their name,” David Wiley, the research coordinator for the Stellwagon Bank National Marine Sanctuary off Cape Cod, said of sand lances. “But they’re extremely important.”
After many decades of absence, humpbacks returned to the Sound beginning in 2015 and at least a few have been recorded feeding in the waters between Connecticut and Long Island or off New London every year since.
Marine scientists believe the sand lance is far from the only reason why humpbacks have been returning to the Sound. They point out that other prey species favored by humpbacks, including menhaden and herring, have also been on the increase in the waters off Connecticut’s shoreline and are likely key to the humpbacks’ return.
Read the full story at the Hartford Courant
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
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.