Saving Seafood

Studies give insight on plight of orca whales

December 30, 2019 — Two studies and a state report released this month build on the efforts to understand what’s impacting the region’s endangered Southern Resident orca whales and what steps could be taken to help save them.

Researchers and wildlife managers have for years suggested that the Southern Resident orcas, which spend several months of the year in the Salish Sea and coastal waters of Washington, are struggling to find large, nutrient-rich chinook salmon to eat.

Studies recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest the Southern Resident orcas are competing with other fish-eating orca populations of the North Pacific Ocean and that orca calves born to families without grandmothers have a lesser chance of finding chinook to eat and surviving to adulthood.

Meanwhile, a draft state report released Dec. 20 concludes it’s not clear whether a move long called for by environment and wildlife groups – to remove dams on the lower Snake River – would significantly boost the number of fish available to the region’s orcas.

Removing four dams on the lower Snake River in southeast Washington, where it curves from the Idaho border toward the Oregon border, could improve conditions in the river system for salmon, according to the report.

Read the full story at The Spokesman-Review

NOAA wins $1.6 million to help lobstermen adapt to whale rules

December 20, 2019 — NOAA Fisheries is adding an additional $1.6 million to current funding to help the New England lobster industry comply with additional protection measures for the imperiled North Atlantic right whales.

“The $1.6 million will support reducing the risk of entanglement of right whales in fishing gear while assisting the lobster fishing industry in adapting to the impacts of new measures to reduce the effects of trap/pot gear on right whales,” NOAA Fisheries said in a statement.

NOAA Fisheries said the additional funding will be dispersed with the assistance of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Further details will follow, NOAA Fisheries said.

Marine scientists say the total population of imperiled North Atlantic right whales continues to hover around 400.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA Fisheries Announces Additional Funding to Support Recovery Actions for North Atlantic Right Whales

December 20, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

This year, NOAA Fisheries will add an additional $1.6 million in federal funds to current funding levels to support additional recovery actions for the North Atlantic right whale. The $1.6 million will support reducing the risk of entanglement of right whales in fishing gear while assisting the lobster fishing industry in adapting to the impacts of new management measures that mitigate the effects of trap/pot gear on right whales. These funds will assist the lobster fishing industry in complying with pending regulations and help to defray costs to support fishermen broadly. NOAA Fisheries plans to work through its partner, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), to expend these funds.

The North Atlantic right whale is critically endangered and fisheries gear entanglements and vessel strikes are among the leading causes of mortalities in both the U.S. and Canada. NOAA Fisheries and our partners are dedicated to conserving and rebuilding the North Atlantic right whale population.

For more information see our webstory.

Maine Lobstermen Skeptical Of Proposal To Tie ‘Whale-Safe’ Seafood Label To Use Of New Fishing Gear

December 17, 2019 — A movement is emerging among conservation groups to create a “whale-safe” seal of approval for lobster caught with new types of gear designed to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. But it could be a tough sell in Maine, where some say the iconic fishery is already sustainable.

A specific “whale-friendly” or even “whale-safe” brand would likely apply to lobster harvested from traps with weak, breakaway rope or remote-controlled “ropeless” gear systems.

Scientists and conservationists say such gear changes, while still in the developmental stage, could reduce or even eliminate the risk that whales will be injured or killed by entanglements.

“That’s really important, that fishermen willing to test this gear, and certainly those fishermen fishing with ropeless gear should be rewarded,” says Erica Fuller, a lawyer at the Conservation Law Foundation, one of several organizations suing the federal government for stronger protections of the roughly 400 North Atlantic right whales remaining on the planet.

Read the full story at Maine Public

North Atlantic right whale ‘moms,’ including Cape regular Harmonia, arrive off Florida

December 13, 2019 — The North Atlantic right whale migration southward is underway.

Since the first right whale report of the season — Harmonia, a right whale commonly seen in Cape Cod Bay — was spotted by fishermen Nov. 23 off Mayport, Fla., biologists have confirmed seeing four more potential right whale “moms.”

Only 409 North Atlantic right whales remain. Right whales travel along the Atlantic coast annually, spending time in warmer Georgia and Florida waters to calve and nurse. They spend late winter and early spring in and and around Cape Cod Bay to feed and socialize before heading northward to Canadian waters for the summer months.

The winter tracking of right whales that may be pregnant — typically off Georgia and Florida — is part of a U.S. and Canadian government effort to stop any further drop in their population, which is considered nearing possible extinction.

Deaths, mainly from ship strikes and entanglement in fishing rope, have outpaced births of these bus-sized creatures recently. Biologists have recorded 30 right whale deaths over the last three years and only 12 births.

“We’re going backwards here,” said Barb Zoodsma, right whale biologist for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries’ Southeast region.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

A Native Tribe Wants to Resume Whaling. Whale Defenders Are Divided.

December 10, 2019 — The hunters paddled frantically, closing in on their target. When they drew near, one of them stood in the cedar canoe and thrust a harpoon into the spine of the 30-foot gray whale.

With the help of fishing boats, the men towed their catch into a small cove in Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, where hundreds of fellow Makah tribal members greeted them like heroes. People hugged and cried. They celebrated what felt like the return of better days.

It was 1999, and the tribe’s first successful whale hunt in seven decades. It was also their last.

The Makah are the only Native Americans who have a treaty with the United States government that explicitly allows them to hunt whales. But they have not because of a protracted administrative and legal battle waged by conservationists and animal rights activists, who call the practice “barbaric” and have generated a wave of negative sentiment against the tribe.

The two-decade tussle could flare in the coming weeks over a proposal that would allow the Makah to resume whaling as early as next year. Tribal members say the struggle goes beyond their right to hunt, and see it as a fight over restoring Native identity, honoring indigenous treaty rights and respecting age-old traditions.

“People argue that you haven’t done it for 70 years, you don’t need to do it anymore,” said Patrick DePoe, 37, a member of the Makah tribal council. “They’re not Makah. They don’t understand what it means for us.”

An administrative law judge was scheduled to hear arguments Thursday on a proposal by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to exempt the Makah from the federal ban on whaling. The exemption would allow the tribe to catch as many as four Eastern North Pacific gray whales every two years for the next decade.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Offshore Wind May Help The Planet — But Will It Hurt Whales?

December 5, 2019 — Tail! Tail!” shouts Dr. Howard Rosenbaum, a marine biologist, before grabbing his crossbow, as we close in on a humpback whale.

Rosenbaum gets into position on the bow of the boat, stands firmly with legs apart, takes aim, and fires at the 40-foot cetacean. The arrow that he releases doesn’t have a point – it has a hollow 2-inch tip to collect skin and blubber, and a cork-like stopper to prevent it from penetrating too deeply.

“Oh, yeah!” come shouts from the small research crew. The hit looks clean. Sure enough, when they scoop the floating arrow out of the water, its tip is filled with a small white sliver of whale flesh, containing DNA that will help identify the humpback and its pod and potentially say something about its migratory patterns.

This is the sort of research that Rosenbaum, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s “Ocean Giants” program, has been doing for decades around the globe. Recently, though, whale monitoring has taken on a new urgency in Rosenbaum’s own native habitat — the Atlantic waters off New York City and Long Island.

As whale populations have grown, the WCS and its collaborator, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have been monitoring them, with an eye toward mediating conflicts with the ocean’s heaviest users: cargo ships, commercial fishing trawlers and the U.S. military.

Now, the whales are poised to get many new, potentially disruptive neighbors: hundreds of skyscraper-high wind turbines, rising from the ocean floor.

The New York Energy Research and Development Authority has awarded two large contracts for offshore wind and anticipates several more in the coming years. The first phase, expected to be complete by 2024, involves dozens of wind turbines in two different offshore plots, leased by energy companies from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. They would generate 1700 megawatts — enough to power more than one million homes.

Read the full story at NPR

GEORGIA: More right whales spotted off area coast

December 4, 2019 — North Atlantic right whale migration is underway, just in time for Whale Week in Savannah.

Since the first right whale of the season was spotted by fishermen Nov. 23 off Mayport, Fla., biologists have confirmed that sighting plus sightings of four more potential right whale moms.

Only about 400 North Atlantic right whales remain. Deaths, mainly from ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear, have outpaced births of these bus-sized creatures recently. Biologists have recorded 30 right whale deaths over the last three years and only 12 births.

“We’re going backwards here,” said Barb Zoodsma, right whale biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries.

That first known arrival from the feeding grounds off new England and Canada to the Georgia/Florida calving grounds was a 19-year-old female nicknamed Harmonia. Records indicate she last gave birth in 2016.

Other whales spotted include “Naevus,” who was seen off Ossabaw Island. “Harmony,” “Arpeggio,” and “Slalom” were spotted off South Carolina.

Read the full story at the Savannah Morning News

Scientists review divisive whale risk reduction model

November 26, 2019 — A panel of scientists gathered in Woods Hole, Mass., last week to evaluate a controversial “decision support tool” used by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service to design proposed rules aimed at protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales and other large marine mammals from entanglement with fishing gear.

Last spring, the NOAA Fisheries Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (TRT) recommended that the fisheries service adopt new rules that would, among other requirements, force Maine lobstermen to remove from the water 50 percent of the vertical lines used to connect traps on the bottom to marker buoys on the surface. The team includes fishermen, scientists, representatives of conservation organizations and fishery management officials from the federal government and from every state from Maine to Florida.

When the fisheries service made its decision last spring on how best to reduce the risk to whales, it relied on a “Decision Support Tool” based on a poll of TRT members rather than extensive data collected over the years as to where the whales are found and how much interaction there has been between them and Maine lobster gear.

Data collected by NOAA show that since the beginning of 2017 70 percent of right whale deaths attributable to human-related causes (21) have occurred in Canadian waters while just 30 percent (nine) have occurred in U.S. waters. Not all of those deaths were clearly attributable to entanglement with fishing gear.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Southern Resident Killer Whale Workgroup to meet via Webinar December 10, 2019

November 26, 2019 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council’s (Pacific Council)  Ad Hoc Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) Workgroup (Workgroup) will meet via webinar, and this meeting will be open to the public.  The  webinar meeting will be held on Tuesday, December 10, 2019, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), or until business for the day has been completed.  This is a public meeting and not a public hearing.  Public comments will be taken at the discretion of the Workgroup co-chairs as time allows.

Please see the SRKW Workgroup Webinar Notice on the Council’s website for participation details.

For further information:

  • Please contact Pacific Fishery Management Council staff officer Ms. Robin Ehlke  at 503-820-2410; toll-free 1-866-806-7204.