September 11, 2015 โ NEW YORK โ Horseshoe crabs are harvested as bait for channeled whelk (conch) and eels, as well as for their blood, which contains a compound considered invaluable for the pharmaceutical industry.
Pew Circulates Cashes Ledge Monument Petition
September 10, 2015 โ The Pew Charitable Trusts is circulating a petition calling for President Obama to designate Cashes Ledge and areas of the New England Canyons and Seamounts as National Monuments. Such as designation would permanently close these areas to fishing and other commercial activity, but would also remove them from the current public management process. Several of the areas, most notably Cashes Ledge, are already off-limits to fishermen under existing habitat protections.
The text of the petition is below:
MAKE HISTORY BY ASKING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO CREATE THE FIRST MARINE NATIONAL MONUMENT IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN!
The โGrand Canyons,โ sea mountains, and Cashes Ledge off New Englandโs coast are national treasures. These precious ecosystems provide refuge for hundreds of species of rare and unique marine wildlife, including whales, seabirds, and long-living cold-water corals. These remote areas are also critical to the health of our ocean fish, which are the lifeblood of Atlantic coastal communities.
Unfortunately, these fragile undersea places are under growing threat of destruction from overfishing and industrial exploitation as the deep ocean becomes more accessible to extraction. Now is the most crucial time to protect New Englandโs Grand Canyons, sea mountains, and Cashes Ledgeโand we need your help!
SEND A MESSAGE. OVERWHELMING PUBLIC SUPPORT IS NEEDED TO CONVINCE THE ADMINISTRATION TO FULLY PROTEC THESE SPECIAL PLACES FOREVER!
Read Saving Seafoodโs previous coverage of the issue:
A Simple Map Shows Cashes Ledge Habitat is Already Protected
NOAA Awards $2.75 Million for Marine Mammal Rescue Efforts
September 10, 2015 โ The following was released by NOAA:
Today, NOAA Fisheries announced the award of $2.75 million in grant funding to partner organizations in 16 states to respond to and rehabilitate stranded marine mammals and collect data on their health. The John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program provides funding to non-profit and for-profit organizations, academic institutions, and state agencies that are members of the National Marine Mammal Stranding Network.
โPrescott grants help our national marine stranding response teams continue to improve their techniques, and supports our efforts to establish links between the health of marine mammals, coastal communities and our coastal ecosystems,โ said Dr. Teri Rowles, NOAA Fisheries lead marine mammal veterinarian and coordinator of the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program. โThe money supports vital information needed to protect and conserve whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions.โ
โPrescott grants tie directly to NOAA Fisheriesโ core mission, which includes the conservation, protection and recovery of protected marine resources, including whales, dolphins, seals and sea lions,โ said Eileen Sobeck, assistant NOAA administrator for fisheries. โHelping our stranding partners do their jobs on the front lines of response and rehabilitation fits in perfectly with our goals.โ
The Stranding Network is comprised of trained professionals and volunteers from more than 100 organizations that partner with NOAA Fisheries to investigate marine mammal strandings, rehabilitate animals, and assist with research on marine mammal health issues. NOAA Fisheries relies on its long-standing partnership with stranding network members to obtain the vital research about marine mammal health needed to develop effective conservation programs for marine mammal populations in the wild.
Since the Prescott Grant Programโs inception in 2001, NOAA Fisheries has awarded 518 Prescott grants to members of the National Marine Mammal Stranding Network, totaling more than $45.5 million. Over the years, Prescott grants have enabled members to improve operations, such as expanding response coverage, enhancing response capabilities and data collection, and improving rehabilitation of marine mammals.
Prescott Grants are made under Title IV of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which authorizes NOAA Fisheries to fund eligible members of the National Marine Mammal Stranding Network through grants and cooperative agreements.
Find more information about the Prescott Grant Program, details on each 2015 grant, eligibility requirements, and funding opportunities on our website.
More sharks along East Coast: 2,800 tagged this spring
September 8, 2015 โ If it seems like there were more sharks than usual near the coast this spring, thatโs because there were. A team of federal researchers, part of the longest-running coastal shark research program along the East Coast, captured and tagged more than 2,800 sharks โ the most in 29 years of population monitoring before the summer season got underway.
โWe caught fish throughout the survey,โ said Lisa Natanson, a scientist at the Narragansett Laboratory of NOAA Fisheriesโ Northeast Fisheries Science Center and leader of the coastal shark survey. โSandbar sharks were all along the coast, while most of the dusky sharks were off North Carolina. We captured a bull shark for the first time since 2001 and recaptured 10 sharks previously tagged by our program and two sharks tagged by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.โ
No one is sure why the numbers were up. It could have been the fish were simply concentrated in the study area from Florida north to Delaware during the time the sampling occurred. That could have been driven by any number of factors ranging from water temperatures to availability of prey, said Shelley Dawicki, a spokeswoman for the science center.
Read the full story at Delaware Online
Experts Say Wasteful Fishing Regulations Not Keeping Pace With Climate Change
September 6, 2015 โ Hundreds of thousands of pounds of valuable fish caught off Connecticutโs coast are thrown overboard every year, and 80 percent of them are dead by the time they hit the water, experts say.
Commercial fishermen, environmentalists and state officials say a prime reason for such a stunning waste of a natural resource is an out-of-date federal regulatory system that hasnโt kept up with the realities of a changing climate and shifting fish populations.
โItโs just a wholly unjustifiable practice,โ said Peter Auster, a senior research scientist at Mystic Aquarium. โThis waste โฆ is pervasive in the way weโre managing fishing.โ
โThe whole construct of the [regulatory] system needs to be questioned,โ said Curt Johnson, executive director of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and Save the Sound.
The problem is that federal fishing regulations are designed to protect fish species based on where they used to be most plentiful. Some of those fish populations have now shifted their range north as a result of global warming, but federal fishing quotas havenโt changed. As a result, Connecticut fishermen are saddled with low, out-of-date quotas, forcing them to throw back huge amounts of certain species, even though those fish have become plentiful off New England.
Read the full story at the Hartford Courant
Rescuers search for 80-foot whale entangled in fishing line
September 5, 2015 โ CALIFORNIA โ Whatโs blue, 80 feet long, weighs about 100 tons and is missing? A Southern California whale entangled in a fishing line.
Aircraft joined wildlife rescuers Saturday in the search for the slippery mammal in the waters off Catalina Island, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Read the full story at The New York Post
Warming Oceans Putting Marine Life โIn a Blenderโ
September 3, 2015 โ Up in Maine, lobsters are thriving. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission reported last month that stocks there reached a record high.
Down the coast, however, the story is different. In southern New England, lobster stocks have plummeted to the lowest levels ever recorded, putting many lobstermen out of business.
Lobster populations rise and fall for many reasons. But in its new report, the commission singled out one factor that is probably driving the recent changes: The ocean is warming.
At the northern edge of the lobstersโ range, higher temperatures may be speeding up their metabolism, leading to the population boom. But at the southern edge of the range, the waters may be getting too warm, putting the animals under extreme stress.
According to a 2013 study, marine species are pushing their range boundaries poleward, away from the Equator, at an average speed of 4.5 miles a year. Thatโs 10 times as fast as the speed at which species on land are moving.
Read the full story at the New York Times
NOAA Awards More Than $4.5 Million to Support Species Recovery
September 4, 2015 โ NOAA announces more than $4.5 million in grants to states and tribes to support endangered or threatened species recovery efforts. The agency is also opening a call for 2016 proposals under this program.
The NOAA Fisheries Species Recovery Grant Programโs 2015 funding supports five new projects and the continuation of 14 multi-year projects.
An Ancient Fish Is Running Out of Time
September 3, 2015 โ From an evolutionary perspective, the pallid sturgeon is a thing of beauty.
Its eyes are a bit beady, itโs true, but good vision is not a prerequisite for living on the bottom of the Missouri River. And its toothless mouth, with its protruding, whiskerlike barbels, is creepy. But these barbels are perfect for sensing food, which it sucks in like a vacuum cleaner.
No, these fish are not sleek and beautiful like trout. But this species of sturgeon, which can grow to a length of six feet and weigh as much as 80 pounds, has managed to survive since the time of the dinosaurs, with fossils dating back some 70 million years.
For all of the adaptations that have enabled this fish to have such a long run, however, the pallid sturgeon is in serious trouble. Twenty-five years ago, the federal government concluded the fish was in imminent danger of extinction and placed it on the endangered species list, where it remains today.
Despite government efforts to expand the population, only perhaps 200 or fewer wild-born pallid sturgeons are thought to inhabit one of its last strongholds โ the Montana stretches of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.
Read the full story at the New York Times
Marine Matters: Beauty Beneath the Sea
September 2, 2015 โ Most people when they hear the word โcoralโ think of shallow, turquoise water and colorful reefs populated by bright tropical fish. Now think again. In the cold and often dark Gulf of Maine, spectacular cold-water coral formations, some of which may be hundreds if not thousands of years old, are just now being mapped and explored.
Most cold-water corals lie in the very deep submarine canyons and seamounts along the edge of the continental shelf. Yet they also occur in deep areas of the Gulf that are closer to shore, such as Jordan Basin. Cold-water corals typically are soft corals with flexible skeletons, unlike the coral species that build tropical reefs. Fishermen have long been familiar with taller coral outcroppings, which they called โtrees,โ on Georges Bank and other shallow-water areas in the Gulf.
Since 2013 scientists funded through NOAAโs Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Program have been conducting research cruises in the Gulf of Maine using remotely controlled underwater vehicles and multibeam sonar to identify cold-water coral communities. This year during a ten-day research cruise, scientists from the University of Maine, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and the Northeast Underwater Research, Technology and Education Center at the University of Connecticut looked at three areas: Outer Schoodic Ridge, the Mount Desert Rock area and the Georges Basin region.
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