Conservation & Environment

June 4, 2014 — Environmental activists and a local legislator are urging Rutgers University to halt a seismic testing study planned for this summer, saying it would be detrimental to marine life and the local fishing industry.

Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action (COA), said during a May 23 press conference in Point Pleasant Beach that the study will include producing a 230- decibel sound blast on the ocean floor off the coast of Barnegat that will impact animal life throughout the shoreline.

“The study will be to blast sound waves deep into the sediment to look for sea level rise and climate change evidence,” Zipf said. “They want to augment some physical core samples that they took in 2009, and this data will provide a 3-D image of the deep sea floor.”

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6) spoke at the event, launching a campaign to halt the seismic testing, which is expected to impact a 240-square-mile area over the course of 30 days, concluding Aug. 17.

Read the full story at the Atlanticville 

 

REEDVILLE, Va. — June 3, 2014 — The company that operates the menhaden fishery in the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia says it has been able to reduce its fossil fuel use thanks to a new oil source.

Omega Protein Inc. said a partnership with an Arizona-based company for a new fuel source has cut energy costs and decreased fossil fuel consumption by up to 80 percent at its Reedville facility.

Omega is a Houston company that operates the fishery in Reedville that processes an oily fish called menhaden that is used in fish oil and other products.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Post

May 31, 2014 — When Captain Cook’s ship, the Endeavour, snared on coral in 1770, the Great Barrier Reef became his “labyrinth of shoals”, a life-threatening trap. About 30 years later, Matthew Flinders, a British navigator, saw the reef in a different light.

Flinders is best known for circumnavigating Australia, and for giving the continent its name. Less well known is that he was the first European to discover the reef for its beauty. To Flinders, its corals were a “new creation” with shapes “excelling in grandeur the most favourite parterre of the curious florist”. For Charlie Veron, a scientist who has seen more of the corals from underwater than anyone, the legacy after two centuries of human impact casts a more chilling sight. Watching the reef’s disintegration, and perhaps its extinction, is “like seeing a house on fire in slow motion”.

Iain McCalman, a historian at the University of Sydney, has written a masterly biography of the Great Barrier Reef through 12 stories like these. The idea came to him in 2001 when he joined a group of historians, literary scholars, astronomers, botanists and indigenous guides aboard a replica of Cook’s ship to re-enact his 18th-century voyage. Most visitors today see the world’s largest reef as a tourist destination. Mr McCalman found it so vast that no human mind can take it in except, perhaps, “astronauts who’ve seen its full length from outer space”.

Read the full story from The Economist

May 30, 2014 — The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has created a new benchmarking tool for fisheries working to improve their practices to better meet MSC standards for sustainability.

The tool, which the MSC calls the Benchmarking and Monitoring Tool (BMT), is geared toward fisheries that have engaged in fisheries improvement projects (FIPs) to improve sustainability. Those fisheries that intend to seek MSC certification can use the tool to tailor their efforts to meet MSC standards, the MSC said in a statement.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

May 28, 2014 — A report released on Wednesday reveals the growing threat of climate change and acidification to marine resources.

The report contains findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report and was published jointly by Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Judge Business School and supported by the European Climate Foundation.

Findings include:

•    The total loss of landings to global fisheries by 2050 due to climate change range from USD 17 billion (EUR 12.5 billion) to USD 41 billion (EUR 30.1 billion) based on a global warming scenario of 2 degrees.


•    Fishery yields will increase 30 – 70 percent in high latitudes but fall by 40 – 60 percent in the Tropics and Antarctica based on 2 degrees of warming. Large species like tuna in the Pacific and Indian oceans are likely to move eastwards.  


•    400 hundred million people depend critically on fish for their food and face reduced access to marine protein because of climate change and acidification. Artisanal fishermen in the Tropics are most at risk.


•    Changes in the distribution of particular marine species may lead to conflict between fishing nations and significant increases in illegal fishing.


•    The impacts of climate change and ocean acidification are generally exacerbated by other factors like pollution, habitat loss and over-fishing

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

May 27, 2014 — Elizabeth Lake and Rafe Petersen of Holland & Knight LLP say the proposed rules “would radically change the regulatory definition and significance of ‘critical habitat,’ resulting in a considerable expansion of the impact of the ESA on private land.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Marine Fisheries Service proposed two new rules and a policy related to their process of protecting and designating “critical habitat” for species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), according to an article by JD Supra available here.
 
Elizabeth Lake and Rafe Petersen of Holland & Knight LLP say the proposed rules “would radically change the regulatory definition and significance of ‘critical habitat,’ resulting in a considerable expansion of the impact of the ESA on private land.”

The first proposed rule would revise the definition of “adverse modification” of critical habitat.  The proposed rule responds to two court decisions that set aside the 1986 definition of “adverse modification.”

Read the full story from the Ag & Food Law Blog

RICHMOND, Va. — March 28, 2014 — The Chesapeake Bay watershed is among eight areas in the nation being designated critical conservation areas.

U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Timothy M. Kaine said Tuesday that designation ensures federal funding to help implement a variety of conservation projects.

With the designation, the bay is eligible to receive a portion of more than $100 million in annual funding. It would be used to help implement a variety of conservation projects and increase the sustainability of regional water, soil, wildlife and natural resources.

Read the full story at the Richmond Times Dispatch 

 

May 23, 2014 — The University of New England announced Friday that the Marine Science Center's Marine Animal Rehabilitation and Conservation program is closing.

The university established the Marine Animal Rehabilitation and Conservation program in 2001 to help rehabilitate and release marine mammals, specifically gray and harbor seals. UNE said that the seal numbers have rebounded, so MARC no longer needs to rehabilitate marine animals.

Ed Bilsky, the vice president of research and scholarship at the University of New England, also noted the need for seal rehabilitation has been reduced since 2001, when they were endangered. Bilsky estimated 1,000 seals have been rehabbed in the past 13 years there.

The Marine Science Center at UNE provides a unique opportunity for college student because it is directly on the main campus and located near the Saco River Estuary. UNE said they will continue educating students about marine mammal behavior, biology and policy.

Read the full story at WCSH

May 24, 2014 — After a morning spent whale watching in Monterey Bay, the passengers on the Point Sur Clipper on April 27 didn't notice anything amiss when they first spotted the humpback.

But unlike the other whales, the 25-foot-long young adult stuck near the surface — and it didn't dive down to feast on the blooms of krill that attract humpbacks to the bay. "It wouldn't fluke up," said Nancy Black, a marine biologist on board the ship that day, referring to the picture-perfect tail flip that humpbacks display before diving to feed. Looking closer, the passenger on the Point Sur also noticed several buoys were strangely close to the whale, trailing behind it.

Black called the U.S. Coast Guard, which soon discovered that the whale was ensnared in a crab pot line. That led to a weekslong rescue effort involving federal and state agencies, six nonprofits, several businesses and dozens of volunteers, who battled rough seas from Monterey to Santa Barbara to free the humpback and give it a shot at survival.

Such large-scale whale rescues are likely to become more common as the population of humpbacks and other whales continues to climb along the California coast, after being suppressed by centuries of whaling. The humpbacks swim north during the spring and summer to feed, clashing with the end of crab season, which in Monterey Bay extends into July.

Most crab pots are removed from the water in the winter, after the largest crabs are taken, said Pete Kalvass, a senior marine biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. So in the past, he said, whales rarely tangled with crab fishing gear. But in the last month, four entangled whales were reported off the West Coast. Two were freed, including a humpback let loose May 6 off the Oregon coast. Crews were unable to attach satellite telemetry tags to two others, and they have not been spotted again.

Once snagged, it wasn't easy to free the whale, the rescuers said as they recounted the adventure.

After Black called the Coast Guard shortly after noon that Sunday, the Guard activated the Whale Entanglement Team, a trained volunteer squad affiliated with the National Marine Fisheries Service. Affectionately called WET, the squad stayed close to the whale, giving the fare-paying passengers on the Point Sur Clipper an extra-long trip.

By 3 p.m., team members had clipped a satellite tag to the gear already wrapped around the whale. Now, wherever the humpback went, they could find it. And that was key, said Pieter Folkens, team leader and marine mammal expert.

Read the full story at the San Jose Mercury News

May 25, 2014 — HOUSTON (AP) — It seems like a simple proposition: American lakes, rivers and offshore waters are filling up with destructive fish and crustaceans originally from other parts of the world, many of them potential sources of food.

So why not control these invasive populations by getting people to eat them?

The idea has gained momentum recently from the lionfish, which invaded the Gulf of Mexico but was successfully marketed to restaurants and today appears to be in decline.

But businesses and scientists have struggled to repeat this apparent triumph with other species. Some, such as Asian carp, are not appetizing to Americans. Others, like feral hogs, reproduce too quickly to make a dent. And then there's the question of whether turning them into sought-after cuisine undermines the larger goal of eliminating them.

"Eating invasive species is not a silver bullet," said Laura Huffman, the Nature Conservancy's director in Texas. But it can still be "a way to get people engaged in the topic and in the solution."

The lionfish, a striped saltwater species with a flowing mane of venomous spines, is native to the Indo-Pacific Ocean and was first spotted in parts of the Gulf and off the East Coast a little more than 10 years ago. The skilled predators damage reefs and devour native fish, and they are eaten only by sharks – or larger lionfish.

People soon learned that beneath the lionfish's spiky skin lies a buttery, flaky meat that is perfect for ceviche, taco filler or as an alternative to lobster. After a few years of intense fishing and brisk fillet sales, the population is dropping.

But similar efforts targeting feral hogs, Asian carp and the Himalayan blackberry have been far less successful.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald