Saving Seafood

Tally of endangered right whale calves spotted so far this year increases to seven

May 28, 2019 — Seven North Atlantic right whale calves have been spotted off the coast of the United States so far in 2019 – a positive development for the critically endangered species, according to a recent report from CBC News.

Last year, no new North Atlantic right whale calves were born, and the overall population for the species was estimated to be just 411 individuals. The increased presence of calves this year is encouraging for research scientists like Garry Stenson, who heads the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) marine mammal division in Canada.

“It’s really nice to start seeing that we’re getting more calves,” Stenson told CBC News. “It’s gonna take a lot more before we’re gonna be feeling at all comfortable, but it does help to have some. It’s a much better view than what we had last year.”

Plane surveillance carried out this month revealed that North Atlantic right whales have returned to Canadian waters earlier than usual this year, arriving in late May instead of the typical June, the DFO said.

One of the world’s three right whale populations, North Atlantic right whales usually spend their winters in warmer waters nearby Florida and Georgia before migrating to New England and the Canadian Maritimes for the summer. In years past during this migration, entanglements in fishing lines deployed by lobster and crab fishing operations and ship strikes have resulted in several whale deaths. In 2017, 17 right whales died from ship strikes or entanglements in fishing gear, and in 2018, an additional three right whales died from similar causes.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Vineyard Wind seeks help in protecting right whales

May 23, 2019 — The company preparing to build an 84-turbine wind farm off Martha’s Vineyard has put out a call  to universities, technology companies and other innovators that could help implement a system to detect the presence of endangered North Atlantic right whales during construction.

Vineyard Wind said it is seeking a firm or institution that can “provide and operationalize enhanced acoustic monitoring systems that will detect the presence of Right Whales, and transmit information in real-time to project staff so that enhanced protections can be effectively implemented.”

Protection would include vessel speed restrictions, Vineyard Wind said.

Utility companies and the state tapped Vineyard Wind to construct an 800-megawatt wind farm 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and 34 miles from the mainland to fulfill the first half of a 1,600-megawatt procurement called for in a 2016 clean energy law.

The company has already entered an agreement with a number of organizations to protect the whales.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Right whales extending their stays in Cape Cod Bay

May 21, 2019 — With the count of North Atlantic right whale sightings in Cape Cod Bay down to zero Thursday, the end-of-season findings by the Center for Coastal Studies indicate what could be new realities: More animals are showing up each year, and the length of time they’re staying in the bay is longer.

“There are two trajectories,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, the center’s right whale ecology program director. “Our trajectory is going up while the total number of right whales is going down, fairly steeply.”

The center has studied the right whales in the bay for several decades, currently with airplane surveys for population counts and boat surveys to identify food densities in the water. The data collected is used, in part, to help the state Division of Marine Fisheries place and lift restrictions in the bay on trap gear fishing and vessel speeds.

The right whales — now considered at risk of extinction in the coming decades along the Atlantic coast due to deaths and injuries from being caught in fishing rope and hit by ships — have a current population of around 411. They typically arrive to feed in Cape Cod Bay in late winter and leave by the end of April, along an annual migratory path that stretches from Florida to Canada.

So far, the center has confirmed 267 individual right whales seen by either plane or boat for the current season, making that roughly 65 percent of the estimated total population. Considering the complete range of the whales’ migration along the East Coast, the concentration in the relatively small area known as Cape Cod Bay is “remarkable,” Mayo said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: Better information needed as Maine lobstermen take on challenge of protecting right whales

May 21, 2019 — In the early 2000s, the news appeared good for endangered North Atlantic right whales. Their population grew significantly, due to both rising numbers of births and fewer deaths from ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear.

That good news has come to an end. Twenty of the rare whales died in just two years — 2017 and 2018, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. For the first time in nearly four decades of monitoring, it appears no right whale calves were born last year.

The consortium estimates there are only 411 right whales off the Atlantic coast.

Given these dire numbers, U.S. fisheries regulators have proposed dramatic declines in the amount of fishing lines in waters where the whales are believed to congregate and pass through.

Last month, a team devoted to reducing right whale deaths told Maine officials that the state must reduce the risk it poses to right whales by 60 percent.

The team recommended that Maine’s lobster fishery cut the number of vertical lines in the water by half. Vertical lines run between traps and buoys on the surface of the water to mark their location. The recommendations will be turned into proposed federal rules, which will be subject to public comments. The process could take up to two years.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

Ships coming to Bay Area slowing down to avoid hitting, killing whales

May 17, 2019 — A campaign to slow ships steaming toward San Francisco and other California ports so they are less likely to injure or kill whales is beginning to pay off, with 22 local and international shipping companies agreeing to reduce speeds voluntarily, federal officials said Thursday.

The effort is all the more important this year, given the carnage caused by large vessels, which often have to travel through national marine sanctuaries to get to their destination ports.

Four of the 10 gray whales found dead near San Francisco this year were killed by ships, and nearly 140 whales have died after being struck since 1988, said representatives of the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The 22 shipping firms, which represent 45% of the 8,000 inbound vessel trips through the Golden Gate every year, were honored by the two organizations Thursday for cutting their speed in 2018 to 10 knots (11.5 mph) or less in areas populated by whales. Those include the Farallones, Channel Islands, Monterey Bay and Cordell Bank marine sanctuaries.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle

More Humpback Whale Deaths Under Investigation

May 15, 2019 — The concerning trend of humpback whales washing up dead in the Bay region continues— with two more whale carcasses found in Virginia in the past month.

The first humpback washed up in Oyster, a barrier island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it was a partly-decomposed male more than 41 feet long, and had landed on a state-leased clam bed. With the help of a local fisherman, the Virginia Aquarium was able to get to the carcass to take tissue samples for analysis. R&C Seafood in Oyster posted photos of the whale on Facebook.

Then on May 2, the Coast Guard advised the Virginia Aquarium about a dead humpback whale that was struck by a container ship about 60 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. That whale had been decomposed and scavenged, so officials didn’t respond, NOAA explains.

The very same day, NOAA received reports of a whale caught in a commercial fishing net in Ocean City, Maryland. According to the reports, Good samaritans and Natural Resources officers worked to free the large mammal. The next day, the National Aquarium and police worked together to look for the whale. Jennifer Goebel, NOAA spokesperson, tells Bay Bulletin, “It was spotted swimming on the ocean side of Ocean City on May 4, and appeared to be gear-free, though we were not able to confirm that with photographs.”

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

MASSACHUSETTS: Right Whales Seen in High Numbers in Cape Cod Bay

May 19, 2019 — Whale researchers at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center are observing large numbers of North Atlantic right whales and other whale species in Northeast waters.

An aerial team flying for the Center out of the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station at Joint Base Cape Cod and from Hyannis, are continuing their long-term survey for right whales.

The effort supports a range of research and is part of an annual seasonal distribution and abundance survey of protected marine animals along the East Coast.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Cod Bay fishing gear restriction lifted

May 13, 2019 — The director of the Division of Marine Fisheries has rescinded the Cape Cod Bay gear restriction for fishermen and speed limit restrictions intended to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales, according to a statement released Thursday night.

The restrictions originally were set to end May 14, but a recent aerial survey by the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies showed that right whales have migrated out of state waters adjacent to Cape Cod.

Commercial and recreational fishermen are now allowed to set their trap gear in the waters north and east of Cape Cod, the statement says. Boaters operating vessels smaller than 65 feet in length may now operate at a speed greater than 10 knots.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Finding consensus on whale protections a tough call in Maine

May 13, 2019 — Federal regulators have given Maine’s lobster industry its marching orders: Find a way to cut the number of surface-to-seabed fishing lines by 50 percent to help prevent the injury or death of even one of the endangered right whales that pass through the Gulf of Maine.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is allowing each lobstering state to develop its own plan to protect the whale, whose numbers have fallen to a little more than 400 in recent years. But it will be hard to find one way to make it work in Maine, where the $485 million-a-year fishery is known for its diversity.

“The devil will be in the details,” said state Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Pat Keliher.

Of the 4,500 people who lobster for a living along Maine’s coast, some fish with single traps at the end of each buoy line while others place multiple traps, from two or three to as many as 30, on a single weighted ground line, with both ends linked to the surface by a single buoy line.

Deciding how many traps to put on a trawl – the gear that connects a line of lobster traps – varies throughout each of the state’s seven lobster zones, depending on traditional fishing practices, shipping traffic, the geography of the ocean floor and the size of the lobster operation.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobstermen rally against delay in opening season

May 10, 2019 — South Shore lobstermen rallied Thursday morning at Town Wharf to protest the decision by the state Division of Marine Fisheries to delay the opening of the season until May 14 to protect right whales.

“There’s a lot of people that are suffering with this closure,” said rally organizer Sheryl Holmes, whose husband, Roscoe “Stoney” Holmes, is a commercial lobsterman who owns the F/V Haley’s Comet out of Plymouth.

The seasonal speed reductions and trap-gear bans imposed by the state to protect right whales typically end May 1, but have been extended first to May 8, and now to May 14.

Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times at the Patriot Ledger