Saving Seafood

New Online Course for Spotting and Reporting Entangled Whales in Alaska Waters

October 3, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The foundation of responding to entangled whales is the on-water community. NOAA’s Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network depends on recreational and commercial boaters and other ocean users for spotting and reporting entangled whales off Alaska’s coast. That’s one reason NOAA Fisheries has teamed up with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to develop a new online training course to help them report entanglements.

Most often, fishermen, tour boat operators, and whale researchers are the ones to first report entanglements. The course will prepare them, and others, to report entanglements in Alaska.

Responding to whale entanglements can be dangerous. Only highly trained and experienced teams with the proper equipment should attempt to disentangle whales.

Boaters who come across entangled whales can still help in the response without getting too close. They can collect information and monitor the whale until trained teams arrive. By knowing what information to collect, and taking and sharing photos with the disentanglement team, boaters can help marine mammal responders. These teams have advanced training to understand the extent of the entanglement before mounting a response. This enables them to respond with the right gear.

“Fishermen and other boaters are our eyes on the water,” said Jon Kurland, head of the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Region Protected Resources Division. “Countless times the information they have provided about a whale entanglement has been the key factor in our response network’s ability to locate the animal, assess its condition, and attempt to disentangle it if the conditions are right.”

Read the full release here

Feds Eye Lobstermen’s Concerns About Plan to Save Whales

October 3, 2019 — The federal government says it’s considering the concerns of a lobster fishermen’s group about a plan to try to save an endangered species of whale.

The plan concerns the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers only about 400. The Maine Lobstermen’s Association pulled its support from the plan this summer because of concerns it placed too much onus on lobstermen, who would be called to remove miles of trap rope from the water.

The lobstermen’s group’s concerns included that right whales are also subject to entanglement in fishing gear in Canadian waters. Chris Oliver, assistant administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, released a letter Wednesday that said the U.S. is working with Canada to reduce that problem.

Read the full story at NECN

Why Whales Are Worrying Lobstermen in Maine

October 1, 2019 — Along the rocky coast of Maine, lobstermen are worried new federal requirements to clear fishing lines from the path of endangered whales will damage their iconic New England industry.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agency is trying to save North Atlantic right whales that are dying at an alarming rate in U.S. and Canadian waters, often after getting tangled in fishing gear or hit by ships. The still-forming federal regulations will cover other parts of New England, but Maine, where lobstermen dangle more than 800,000 lines from buoys to ocean-floor traps in their busiest months, has the most at stake.

Meeting an aggressive federal target for reducing whale hazards could mean pulling half those lines from the water. The state’s lobster industry and political leaders say this is untenable for the armada of mostly small lobster boats fishing the Gulf of Maine. It also misses the target, they say, since most dead whales have recently turned up in Canada, and none in Maine.

“We’re not unwilling to adapt, we just want to adapt in a way that will actually benefit the species,” said Chris Welch, a 31-year-old lobsterman from Kennebunk, Maine, regarding the whales. “We don’t want to go extinct, either.”

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

MASSACHUSETTS: Truro lobsterman says rules to protect right whales costly to his business

September 30, 2019 — Cheryl Souza is ending her lobster sales after October.

But third-generation lobsterman Billy Souza, as it turns out, is considering quitting as well.

“It’s all the whale issues,” Souza said. Unlike the lobstering in the days of Souza’s grandfather, Frank Souza, and his father, William Souza, the current generation fishing off Cape Cod is under an intense and unique scrutiny. That scrutiny is directly linked to the increasing focus by federal and state regulators on imperiled North Atlantic right whales, which are dying or suffering debilitating injuries due to entanglement in fishing rope.

“We have the whale watch boats here, and we have the Division of Marine Fisheries that does flyovers all the time,” said Souza, 66. “The whales could get entangled anywhere in the world, but there’s so many eyes on them here it looks like we’re the bad guys and we’re not.” On any given early spring day, at least two to three right whale research vessels can be found in Cape Cod Bay, where the whales feed through May and then migrate northward to Canadian waters.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

In California, orcas and salmon have become so scarce people have forgotten what once was. Will the Northwest be next?

September 30, 2019 — If there is a hell for salmon, it probably looks like this.

There were many more golf balls in the water than salmon this summer, whacked there by enthusiasts at Aqua Golf, a driving range on the bank of the Sacramento River.

Below the surface, the gravel salmon need to make their nests had been mined decades ago to build Shasta Dam, 602 feet tall and with no fish passage. The dam cut off access to all of the cold mountain waters where these fish used to spawn.

The hillsides above the river were blackened by wildfire. Houses, instead of forests, stood along the banks. Cars roared by on Interstate 5 as temperatures soared to 105 degrees.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Lobster industry uses video, social media to fight whale regulations

September 26, 2019 — Maine lobstermen and the many businesses that depend on them are anxiously waiting for decisions on new regulations to protect right whales. The proposal for tough new restrictions has had the industry concerned for months.

“Maine lobstermen are extremely worried about the consequence of the whale rules. They have a lot on the line with this,” says Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

Federal officials have said they want the lobster industry to reduce the number of “vertical lines” (ropes) in the water by as much as 60%, to prevent right whales from becoming tangled in them. Lobster industry leaders and others have said over the summer they worry that will dramatically reduce the number of traps, and hurt incomes, or result in having to fish long strings of traps, called trawls, which would be dangerous.

And fishermen have complained for years that they are not the ones posing a threat to the right whales.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Scientists blast Maine lobstermen’s whale safety stance

September 24, 2019 — Eighteen scientists who work in North Atlantic right whale research and rescue have said the Maine lobster industry is “significantly underestimating” the harm their equipment causes.

The scientists have called on the state of Maine to support the National Marine Fisheries Service in developing new rules to protect the whales from lobster gear injuries.

“Reducing entanglement in East Coast waters of the United States is a critical part of a comprehensive strategy for right whale survival and recovery,” Scott Kraus, chief scientist for marine mammals at New England Aquarium’s Anderson Center for Ocean Life, and Mark Baumgartner, associate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and chairman of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, said in a letter Tuesday to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

In addition to Kraus and Baumgartner, other scientists at WHOI and the Anderson Center for Ocean Life in Boston signed the letter, as well as leaders from the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which has an operations center in Yarmouth Port.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Collins proposes reforms to support Maine lobster industry, protect whales

September 23, 2019 — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) proposed changes to federal reforms that would protect whales and support the Maine lobster industry.

Sen. Collins joined her congressional colleagues from Maine in jointly responding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) call for input to develop modifications to the proposed regulations developed by NOAA’s Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (TRT).

In a letter sent on Tuesday to the NOAA TRT team, the delegation recommended measures that would help reduce right whale fatalities without threatening the lobster industry, including more Maine-specific gear markings, improved monitoring, support for the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ proposal to preserve the current regulatory exemptions line, and the state’s plan to improve data collection.

Read the full story at The Ripon Advance

PFMC: Reminder: Ad Hoc Southern Resident Killer Whale Workgroup to hold meeting October 8-9, 2019

September 23, 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 hold a two-day meeting that is open to the public.  The meeting will begin Tuesday, October 8, 2019, at 10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and recess at 5:00 p.m.  It will continue at 9 a.m. Wednesday, October 9, and will end at 2 p.m. The meeting times are an estimate; the meetings will adjourn when business for the day is complete.

Please see the SRKW Workgroup October 8-9, 2019 in-person meeting notice on the Council’s website for participation details.

For further information:

Dead whale found in LI waters was last seen caught in fishing line, NOAA says

September 20, 2019 — The North Atlantic right whale whose decomposed body was found floating in the waters off Fire Island earlier this week was seen alive last month caught up in fishing line, officials said.

Wounds likely inflicted by plastic rope confirmed he was the rare leviathan seen in the August video. Scientists had previously named him “Snake Eyes” for the twin eye-shaped scars on his head, said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist at Anderson Cabot for Ocean Life at Boston’s New England Aquarium.

The fishing line that may have ended the whale’s life — after he had swum in the Atlantic for more than four decades — ran through his mouth and possibly anchored his tail to the sea bed, Hamilton said.

Read the full story at Newsday