Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: Gov. Jerry Brown Signs Law To Protect Whales From Crab Traps

September 28, 2016 — SAN FRANCISCO — California’s governor has signed legislation meant to reduce the surging number of whales getting caught in crabbing gear.

Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, announced Friday that he approved the bill to pay bounties to crabbers who retrieve lost or abandoned crab pots in the off-season and make the fishermen who lost the crabbing gear pay a fee.

There have been a record number of reported cases of whales getting caught by the ropes of traps set to catch Dungeness crabs. That led crabbing fishermen to join conservation groups in backing the legislation.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at CBS San Francisco 

Bay State lobstermen press pols to ease access to restricted areas

September 22, 2016 — BOSTON — Bay State lobstermen want federal fishing regulators to work with them to ease restrictions on lobstering in Massachusetts Bay and two areas east of the South Shore, proposing new safety measures that would allow boats to continue to operate while also protecting endangered whales.

Local lobstermen and leaders of the South Shore Lobster Fisherman’s Association met Wednesday at the State House with legislators and representatives for members of the state’s Congressional delegation to discuss their pitch for preventing whale entanglements without having to remove all traps from February through April.

“The point is not to repeal the closure. It’s to reach a compromise,” said Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester.

John Haviland, president of the association who lobsters out of Green Harbor, said lobstermen are proposing to open three sections — representing a fraction of the larger 2,965 square nautical mile restricted area — for parts of the three-month ban as long as traps are retrofitted with sleeves for their vertical lines that would break every 40 feet under 1,575 pounds of pressure.

Haviland said the line-safety improvement proposal is based on research done by the New England Aquarium and Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute showing that right whales would be as much as 85 percent less likely to become entangled in lines engineered to break at those specifications.

Beginning in 2015, the National Marine Fisheries Service implemented a rule designed to protect right and humpback whales that prohibits lobster traps in an area stretching from Cape Cod Bay to Boston between Feb. 1 and April 30.

Read the full story from State House News Service at the Gloucester Times

Presidential Proclamation — Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument

September 16, 2016 — The following was released by the White House:

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

For generations, communities and families have relied on the waters of the northwest Atlantic Ocean and have told of their wonders. Throughout New England, the maritime trades, and especially fishing, have supported a vibrant way of life, with deep cultural roots and a strong connection to the health of the ocean and the bounty it provides. Over the past several decades, the Nation has made great strides in its stewardship of the ocean, but the ocean faces new threats from varied uses, climate change, and related impacts. Through exploration, we continue to make new discoveries and improve our understanding of ocean ecosystems. In these waters, the Atlantic Ocean meets the continental shelf in a region of great abundance and diversity as well as stark geological relief. The waters are home to many species of deep-sea corals, fish, whales and other marine mammals. Three submarine canyons and, beyond them, four undersea mountains lie in the waters approximately 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod. This area (the canyon and seamount area) includes unique ecological resources that have long been the subject of scientific interest.

The canyon and seamount area, which will constitute the monument as set forth in this proclamation, is composed of two units, which showcase two distinct geological features that support vulnerable ecological communities. The Canyons Unit includes three underwater canyons — Oceanographer, Gilbert, and Lydonia — and covers approximately 941 square miles. The Seamounts Unit includes four seamounts — Bear, Mytilus, Physalia, and Retriever — and encompasses 3,972 square miles. The canyon and seamount area includes the waters and submerged lands within the coordinates included in the accompanying map. The canyon and seamount area contains objects of historic and scientific interest that are situated upon lands owned or controlled by the Federal Government. These objects are the canyons and seamounts themselves, and the natural resources and ecosystems in and around them.

The canyons start at the edge of the geological continental shelf and drop from 200 meters to thousands of meters deep. The seamounts are farther off shore, at the start of the New England Seamount chain, rising thousands of meters from the ocean floor. These canyons and seamounts are home to at least 54 species of deep-sea corals, which live at depths of at least 3,900 meters below the sea surface. The corals, together with other structure-forming fauna such as sponges and anemones, create a foundation for vibrant deep-sea ecosystems, providing food, spawning habitat, and shelter for an array of fish and invertebrate species. These habitats are extremely sensitive to disturbance from extractive activities.

Because of the steep slopes of the canyons and seamounts, oceanographic currents that encounter them create localized eddies and result in upwelling. Currents lift nutrients, like nitrates and phosphates, critical to the growth of phytoplankton from the deep to sunlit surface waters. These nutrients fuel an eruption of phytoplankton and zooplankton that form the base of the food chain. Aggregations of plankton draw large schools of small fish and then larger animals that prey on these fish, such as whales, sharks, tunas, and seabirds. Together the geology, currents, and productivity create diverse and vibrant ecosystems.

Read the full proclamation at the White House

What the ‘sixth extinction’ will look like in the oceans: The largest species die off first

September 15, 2016 — We mostly can’t see it around us, and too few of us seem to care — but nonetheless, scientists are increasingly convinced that the world is barreling towards what has been called a “sixth mass extinction” event. Simply put, species are going extinct at a rate that far exceeds what you would expect to see naturally, as a result of a major perturbation to the system.

In this case, the perturbation is us — rather than, say, an asteroid. As such, you might expect to see some patterns to extinctions that reflect our particular way of causing ecological destruction. And indeed, a new study published Wednesday in Science magazine confirms this. For the world’s oceans, it finds, threats of extinction aren’t apportioned equally among all species — rather, the larger ones, in terms of body size and mass, are uniquely imperiled right now.

From sharks to whales, giant clams, sea turtles, and tuna, the disproportionate threat to larger marine organisms reflects the “unique human propensity to cull the largest members of a population,” the authors write.

“What to us was surprising was that we did not see a similar kind of pattern in any of the previous mass extinction events that we studied,” said geoscientist Jonathan Payne of Stanford University, the study’s lead author. “So that indicated that there really is no good ecological analogue…this pattern has not happened before in the half billion years of the animal fossil record.”

The researchers conducted the work through a statistical analysis of 2,497 different marine animal groups at one taxonomic level higher than the level of species — called “genera.” And they found that increases in an organism’s body size were strongly linked to an increased risk of extinction in the present period — but that this was not the case in the Earth’s distant past.

Indeed, during the past 66 million years, there was actually a small link between smaller body sizes and going extinct, marking the present as a strong reversal. “The extreme bias against large-bodied animals distinguishes the modern diversity crisis from all potential deep-time analogs,” the researchers write.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Switch and chips: 20 percent of fish are purposely mislabeled, sometimes dangerously

September 9, 2016 — In the bizarro world of seafood fraud, a fish is not always what it seems.

When sold in Brazil, largetooth sawfish — a species classified as critically endangered — becomes anonymous “shark.”

When sold in a certain Santa Monica, Calif., sushi shop, illegal whale meat became fatty tuna. (The restaurant has since shut down.)

And when sold across the United States, cheap Asian catfish becomes one of 18 types of white fish fraudsters want it to be, according to a recent report.

Worldwide, one in five pieces of fish meat is incorrectly named on the menu or label, revealed the new survey representing 25,000 fish samples.

Oceana, a marine conservation and advocacy group, released the report on Wednesday, and updated the global map it created in 2014. The new map is interactive and highlights news stories of restaurant fraud, as well as DNA analysis and other scientific studies.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Feds take most humpback whales off endangered species list

September 7, 2016 — HONOLULU — Federal authorities took most humpback whales off the endangered species list Tuesday, saying their numbers have recovered through international efforts to protect the giant mammals.

Known for their acrobatic leaps from the sea and complex singing patterns, humpback whales were nearly hunted to extinction for their oil and meat by industrial-sized whaling ships well through the middle of the 20th century. But the species has been bouncing back since an international ban on commercial whaling took effect in 1966.

The moratorium on whaling remains in effect, despite the new classifications.

The National Marine Fisheries Service said it first had evidence to indicate there were 14 distinct populations of humpback whales around the world. It then said nine of these populations have recovered to the point where they no longer need Endangered Species Act Protections. These include whales that winter in Hawaii, the West Indies and Australia.

Before, the agency classified all humpback whales as one population. They had been listed as endangered since 1970.

“Today’s news is a true ecological success story,” Eileen Sobeck, assistant administrator for fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Scientists blame fishing gear for fewer whale births

September 7, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — A study recently published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science says that, despite efforts by fishermen and federal fisheries management authorities, more right whales than ever are getting tangled up in fishing gear. The study also states that injuries and deaths from those incidents “may be overwhelming recovery efforts” for the endangered right whale population.

In the report published in July, lead author Scott Kraus, a whale researcher at the New England Aquarium in Boston, says that while the population of whales has increased from fewer than 300 in 1992 to about 500 in 2015, births of right whales have declined by 40 percent since 2010.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, between 2009 and 2013 an average of 4.3 whales a year were killed by “human activities,” virtually all of them involving entanglement with fishing gear.

From 2010 to 2015, 85 percent of right whale deaths resulted from entanglements with fishing gear. Those numbers stand in sharp contrast to what occurred between 1970 and 2009.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

NOAA ship back after extensive trip

September 6, 2016 — NEWPORT, RI — Research scientists recently had the first confirmed sighting of a True’s beaked whale that was combined with a verified recording of the whale’s sounds.

“The whales are very far offshore and can spend one to three hours below the surface without coming up,” said Debra Palka, a research biologist with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass. “The whales are not seen very often.”

Palka was among a team of scientists that just completed a 54-day trip at sea aboard the 209-foot National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel Henry B. Bigelow, which was welcomed back home Friday at a ceremony that featured U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Rear Adm. Anita Lopez, deputy director for operations in NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations; and Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Taylor, Bigelow’s commanding officer, as the speakers.

Reed announced in April that Bigelow’s new home port would be Newport, moving here permanently from Woods Hole. He lobbied for several years to have the ship here because the waterfront at Naval Station Newport is an integral part of operations for both NOAA and Coast Guard vessels, he said.

Read the full story at The Westerly Sun

Study predicts alarming krill drop by end of the century

August 30, 2016 — Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) habitat is undergoing a continuous deterioration process, which could lead to a reduction of up to 80 per cent by the end of the century.

Given the key role that this small crustacean plays in the marine food chain, its decline would cause other problems for species that depend on it as a food source, such as whales, penguins, seals, squid and fish, among other marine organisms.

This dark forecast comes from a study performed at Yale University by Andrea Piñones, a researcher at the Research Centre for High Latitude Marine Ecosystem Dynamics (IDEAL) and the Advanced Study Centre in Arid Zones (CEAZA), along with Alexey Fedorov, a researcher at Yale University.

Piñoness explains that the krill population has already fallen between 80 and 90 per cent since 1970, a situation that has generated a broad scientific debate on the causes of this decline.

In this regard, many believe that this is related to the changes in the environment, particularly with warming Antarctic waters.

To carry out the study, whose results were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers combined climate simulations — based on the projections of the international panel of climate change –, with a krill growth model. Thus, they determined that with an increase in water temperature and sea ice melting, its habitat could reduce up to 80 per cent by 2100.

Read the full story at FiS United States

Study finds ship noise disrupting humpback whale feeding

August 12, 2016 — One of the biggest threats to humpback whales spending their summers in New England is being hit by a passing ship.

But a collision isn’t all they have to fear. A study published Wednesday found that low-frequency noise from passing freighters and cargo ships near the coast could be disrupting their ability to feed.

A team of researchers examining the foraging behavior of 10 whales in the Gulf of Maine found that some of these 40-ton cetaceans descended more slowly in the presence of ships, giving them less time to find the food they’d normally consume. The whales also conducted fewer side-roll maneuvers — a technique they use to feed on a type of fish known as a sand lance that’s found just above the sea floor.

“Overall, I was kind of surprised that we were able to detect any response statistically just because these humpback whales are very adaptable,” said Hannah Blair, a graduate student at Stony Brook University in New York who led the analysis on the data.

Whales, dolphins and other marine life depend heavily on sound to communicate with one another and to search for food. A growing body of evidence in recent decades suggests noise caused by humans, including ship noise, is wreaking havoc on marine life. It masks sounds produced by prey and alters the behavior of prey.

Findings like these prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in July to announce a project to address noise that impacts aquatic species and their habitat over the next 10 years. The goals include educating the public about the problem and “minimizing the acute, chronic and cumulative effects of noise on marine species and their habitat.”

The study offers the first evidence that noise could be harming the feeding behavior of humpback whales.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Times