Conservation & Environment

October 5, 2012 — Ted Danson is the latest male activist to be welcomed to GQ’s The Gentlemen’s Fund, an initiatives that “encourages men to become agents of change by supporting charities that champion these causes.” GQ is honoring him for his work with Oceana, the largest ocean advocacy organization in the world.

In Danson’s new video that talks about his work with the organization, he says, “A third of what the world catches is thrown away dead or dying because it’s not the fish that they were after.” One third all fish caught being bycatch is a pretty staggering statistic. For every two fish you see at the market, that means one was discarded as trash.

As for what it takes to be a GQ gentlement, Danson says, “I think a gentlemen is more likely to step up and do the right thing in the moment. If the ego starts getting above the work you’re doing…then you lose your gentlemen’s badge for the day.” He asks other men to “start giving back now.”

Danson joins Adam Levine and Kellen Lutz as this year’s ambassadors. Check out the Oceana video for the “Cheers” star’s full thoughts on Oceana’s history and mission.

 

Read the full story here

 

 

October 5, 2012 – NMFS has approved a plan today that allows the Hawaii-based shallow-set longline fishery to capture and kill more endangered sea turtles when targeting swordfish on the high seas of the North Pacific Ocean.

Current regulations allow the fishery to take, each year, 16 endangered leatherback sea turtles and 17 endangered loggerhead sea turtles. The fishery is closed if either of these take limits is reached. Today's final rule approves a 62 percent increase in the allowable take of leatherback sea turtles to 26 per year, and a 100 percent increase in the allowable take of loggerhead sea turtles, up to 34 per year.

“This decision is outrageous”, says Ben Enticknap, Pacific Project Manager for Oceana. “On the one hand the federal government acknowledges Pacific leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles are endangered and that more needs to be done to protect them. At the same time they say it is okay for U.S. fishermen to kill more of them.”

The leatherback sea turtles captured by the Hawaii-based swordfish fishery are from the same western Pacific population that migrates from nesting beaches in Indonesia to protected foraging grounds off the U.S. West Coast. Earlier this year the Fisheries Service designated nearly 42,000 square miles of critical habitat for leatherback sea turtles in ocean waters off California, Oregon and Washington. In September 2011 they upgraded the status of Pacific loggerhead sea turtles from threatened to endangered, meaning that they are at higher risk of going extinct than previously thought.

 

Seafood.com is a subscription-based website. The article is reprinted with permission.  

 

 

October 5, 2012: The following was published by Menhaden Defenders.

Our grassroots group, “Menhaden Defenders” has been working with fellow anglers to increase awareness and get fisherman involved in the fight because they are on the front lines and have watched this vital forage fish vanish right before their eyes.

After sitting before the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission (ASMFC) last week, it frustrated me to listen to our publicly appointed commissioners openly debate whether or not there is “enough good data” to move forward with the catch limits they agreed to put in place last November. This meeting made it even more apparent to me that now is the time for us to increase our outreach beyond the recreational fishing community. The industry has its attorneys and lobbyists in place and they are making every attempt to delay this process so they can continue to fish at the unrestricted, breakneck pace they are used to.

 Angler outcry and participation is simply not enough as this issue goes so much deeper than fishing. Menhaden fish, in one form or another, are in our lives and due to our seemingly insatiable Omega-3 fever, continue to thrive on our grocer’s and pharmacy shelves. Consumers can’t even begin to perceive the products that it is used in, sprayed on, or grown with. Menhaden or Bunker as we call them here, have been depleted to the lowest levels ever recorded.

Menhaden are the backbone of the marine food web and vitally important to an amazing number of creatures both in the water and along its shores. People everywhere need to know that commercial overfishing has reduced (pun intended) Atlantic Menhaden stocks over 88% from what they used to be. Put simply, if there is not a significant catch limit placed upon this fishery now, we are looking at an ecological disaster in the making.

As the ASMFC continues through this fall with its debate of exactly how much of a catch limit to implement and how many tons of reduced landings each of the two sectors will have to absorb, the demise continues. The bunkers are purse seined and vacuumed up by the ton, ground up and turned into fish meal/fish oil (reduction sector-156K mt) and lobster/crab bait (Bait sector-45K mt). Together, both sectors net over 200,000 metric tons of bunker out of Mid Atlantic waters each year with the majority of landings recorded in Virginia and New Jersey.

 

Read the full story at Menhaden Defenders

Analysis: Menhaden Defenders’ Paul Eidman, in his article, “Mini Needs Menhaden,” writes of “an ecological disaster in the making” unless new limits are imposed on the Atlantic menhaden fishery. This is just one of several exaggerated claims about the current state of menhaden management in the article, which fails to present several key facts in its account.

The menhaden stock is nowhere close to the “ecological disaster” that the article describes. According to the 2010 menhaden stock assessment, the last assessment considered to be reliable, menhaden are not currently overfished. This means that, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the stock is producing enough eggs to sustain itself. Overfishing, where the number of menhaden caught exceeds the mortality rate determined by the ASMFC, occurred only twice in the 15 years between 1993 and 2008. In 2011, the Commission adopted a new, more conservative baseline for determining overfishing going forward. Based on that new “reference point,” the Menhaden Board determined that overfishing also occurred in 2011 based on harvest increases, the new reference point, and apparent lack of stock growth. Due to adoption of the new reference point and model uncertainty, no overfishing determinations have been made for 2009 and 2010.

The article expresses frustration that “our publicly appointed commissioners openly debate whether or not there is ‘enough good data’ to move forward with the catch limits they agreed to put in place last November.” However, the real debate concerns the 2012 menhaden stock assessment, which is widely regarded as critically flawed and was determined by the ASMFC’s Menhaden Technical Committee to not be suitable for management advice. The model used in the assessment was found to have consistently underestimated the population size and overestimated fishing mortality. In fact, the new assessment estimated a dramatically lower fishing mortality rate for 2008 than was estimated in the 2010 assessment that found overfishing by a very small amount (0.4%).

Similarly, Eidman writes that menhaden stocks have decreased “over 88% from what they used to be,” and, “many of the menhaden schools north of Cape Cod and south of the Carolinas have simply vaporized.” But this statement is highly selective. The 88% figure only regards a portion of all the available data on menhaden, charting the decline from the early 1980s, a period where menhaden biomass was particularly high due to several years of strong recruitment. However, if the more complete time series going back to the 1950s is examined, the menhaden population is at levels similar to those seen in the 1960s. The full time series also shows that menhaden recruitment is highly variable by year, and periods of high recruitment, such as those seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s, are more likely to be the result of favorable environmental conditions than a reduction in fishing activity.

While the article states, “many of the menhaden schools north of Cape Cod and south of the Carolinas have simply vaporized,” recent evidence suggests that there may be more menhaden in the northern range (the upper Mid-Atlantic and New England) than previously thought. In the fall of 2011, Dr. James Sulikowski, of the University of New England, conducted an aerial survey of the waters off New England and Long Island, New York, to provide partial documentation of the menhaden in the northern range, an area for which there are little data available. When the results of the survey were later analyzed, it was found that the coast-wide menhaden biomass may be twice as high as currently estimated.

The article attempts to buttress its conservation argument by presenting the case of “Mini,” a bottlenose dolphin spotted by the author on a dolphin-watching trip in Sandy Hook, NJ. According to the article, harvest reductions are necessary in order to provide adequate forage for marine animals such as Mini. The author’s account relies exclusively on anecdotal data, which is not consistent with current scientific literature. Bottlenose dolphins do not exclusively, nor even primarily, eat menhaden. A 2004 study by Damon Gannon and Danielle Waples, of the Duke University Marine Laboratory, examined the stomach contents of bottlenose dolphins near North Carolina and found that the largest parts of their diet were Atlantic croaker, weakfish, and squid.

Eidman bases his arguments around several misleading claims about menhaden. The result is a portrayal of the fishery that is significantly more dire than what is actually indicated in the most relevant scientific data.

 

 

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — September 28, 2012 — Efforts to conserve giant bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, keyed to protecting juveniles, are working, according to a report in a leading Spanish newspaper.

The report focused on a draft study by a committee of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna, or ICCAT, and was published last Friday in El Pais, Spain’s largest circulation daily. A synopsis of the lengthy article was also posted on the website atuna.com.

The news is especially encouraging because the U.S. and other Western Hemisphere nations for years have followed what is considered responsible policies only to see the Mediterranean bluefin — which mix with western Atlantic stocks — captured young, penned up and bulked up with food the way geese are force-fed to produce the best foie gras before slaughter.

El Pais’s article has quickly gained international attention for the optimistic findings by the panel of ICCAT.

World Wildlife Foundation, which helped craft the Mediterranean tuna conservation plan, said it “welcomes this good news.”

 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

 

September 27, 2012 — A survey of underwater canyons off the U.S. East Coast found a number of previously unknown hotspots for deep-sea corals.

The exploration, the first to look for corals and sponges in the area in decades, is helping researchers develop a computer model to determine where other coral hotspots might be found.

The survey took place over a two-week stretch in July. Researchers aboard the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Henry B. Bigelow ship looked for corals in submarine canyons off New Jersey, and connected to Georges Bank, a large elevated area of seafloor about 60 miles (100 kilometers) offshore that stretches as far south as Cape Cod, Mass., and north to Nova Scotia.

"The deep-sea coral and sponge habitats observed in the canyons are not like those found in shallow-water tropical reefs or deep-sea coral habitats in other regions," said Martha Nizinski, chief scientist of the research cruise, in a statement.  "We know very little about the distribution and ecology of corals in the canyons off the Northeast coast. Although our explorations have just begun, we've already increased our knowledge about these deepwater coral habitats a hundred times over."

The researchers took thousands of photographs of the coral using a remotely operated camera towed behind the ship. The corals observed live at depths between 650 and 6,500 feet (200 to 2,000 meters). Although no specimens were collected during this expedition, the thousands of images taken will be analyzed in the coming months to determine what types of coral live there.

 

Read the full story at the Huffington Post

 

 

September 27, 2012 — Environmental groups have launched a global campaign to stop fishermen from slicing sharks’ fins off at sea before tossing the animals overboard to sink to slow deaths. But the push is ensnaring New England fishermen and processors, who take fins only from dead dogfish already landed for their meat.

Bans passed, or being proposed, in a number of states do not distinguish between methods used for obtaining fins, and local fishermen say if they can’t sell the fins, dogfish would be unprofitable.

“We agree . . . we don’t want sharks being killed only for their fins, but we aren’t doing that,’’ said Walinski, a slim 55-year old who goes out seven mornings a week in his 35-foot boat to catch his daily 3,000-pound quota of spiny dogfish. “Still, if we can’t sell the fins, we’d be done — there is such a fine margin to make money on dogfish.”

Dogfish is a low-value type of shark but a growing niche of the fishing industry, especially on Cape Cod and in Southeastern Massachusetts, as cod and flounder stocks plummet and the species makes a rebound from heavy overfishing in the 1990s. About 200 fishermen in Massachusetts chase “dogs,” and they caught about 11.5 million pounds last year, up from a low of 1.2 million pounds in 2004.

The killing of sharks for only their fins is already banned in US waters, but environmental groups want to stop the importation of shark fins that are destined for Asian restaurants in the United States. Knowing a federal import ban would likely spark free trade complaints from other countries, the groups are pushing for state bans on possession of shark fins to accomplish the same goal.

In the past two years, legislation has passed in five states – including California, from where some New England shark fins have long been exported to Asia. The laws largely prohibit the possession, sale, trade, and distribution of detached shark fins. Similar bans have been proposed, but not yet passed, in seven East Coast states, including New York, another export hub of local dogfish fins. There has been no legislation offered in New England, likely because of the dogfish’s importance to local fishermen.

 

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

 

September 26, 2012– Ed. Note:  The release from the Humane Society states that there was "low compliance with the requirement in the Coastal Gulf of Maine Closure Area".

NMFS regulations require gillnet fishermen to deploy “pingers”, devices that regularly emit an audible "ping" to deter harbor porpoise from gear interactions. According to NMFS observer data, the fleet was 82.5 percent compliant with having the correct number of pingers, based on 883 observed hauls. The fleet was 92.4 percent compliant for pinger functionality based on 428 pingers tested. However, determining the functionality of pingers in the field can be difficult for both fishermen and NMFS enforcement.  To further advance pinger compliance, the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund has worked with the Australian manufacturer Future Oceans to ensure they have the manufacturing capability to deliver new technology pingers with LED indicators.  The LEDs will enable fishermen to instantly know if the pinger is functioning properly.

Fishermen have agreed to deploy twice the number of traditional pingers currently required starting October 1, and beginning in November (as soon as they can be delivered) to replace the old pingers with the required number of new generation "LED pingers" which provide a visual confirmation of pinger functionality. The Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund has offered to make new-technology LED pingers available to fishermen through favorable equipment leasing terms to enable fishermen to remain in compliance without the financial stresses of an up-front capital investment.

The Humane Society of the United States criticizes a decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service that will lead to additional deaths of fall-migrating harbor porpoises by delaying closure of gillnet fishing in an area off the New England coast. Under pressure from the commercial fishing industry, the federal agency will not put the closure in effect Oct. 1 as required by the agency’s own regulations. 

The area is in waters off the coast of New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts and is heavily used by the porpoises during their seasonal migration. In this area, porpoises are killed in large numbers when they become entangled in the invisible gillnets commercial fishermen set to catch fish such as cod, flounder and dogfish. Federal regulations require the seasonal use of acoustic devices known as “pingers,” which attach to nets and emit a high-frequency sound to alert porpoises to potential danger in their paths. Because of low compliance with the requirement in the Coastal Gulf of Maine Closure Area and a high number of porpoise deaths, the area was to be closed for 60 days during the fall migration. Compliance with the regulation is high in other areas. 

“The National Marine Fisheries Service is legally responsible under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to protect harbor porpoises,” said Sharon Young, marine issues field director for The HSUS. “The agency’s step back from its own regulations and retreat from a compromise plan between the commercial fishing industry and environmental groups may lead to a larger number of porpoise deaths this fall.” 

In 2007, when government regulators discovered that commercial fishermen were failing to use pingers properly, fishermen and environmental groups, including The HSUS, reached a compromise in which the industry agreed to abide by mandates to use pingers or face a closure if porpoise mortality remained unacceptably high. This agreement became a federal regulation that NMFS is now disregarding. 

 

Read the full release from the Humane Society of the United States

 

 

September 21, 2012 — The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) issued a new report this week detailing the catch and bycatch (or unintentional catch) of fisheries in the Northeast from July 2010 to June 2011. The report finds that approximately 156 million pounds of fish were discarded (or thrown back overboard), likely dead or dying, from North Carolina to Maine during this period. In fact, some trawl fisheries were found to discard more than half of their catch. Additionally, NMFS indicates that no information is being collected about bycatch in more than half of the fishing fleets in this region.

“If modern fisheries management is to succeed, we must account for every single fish that is caught, whether it’s done intentionally or not,” said Gib Brogan, Northeast representative at Oceana. “Without accurate data about what’s being brought to shore as well as wasted at sea, setting accurate catch limits is virtually impossible. It’s ludicrous that we know so little about the impact of our fisheries in the Northeast.”

This report comes as the New England Fishery Management Council continues to grapple with significant reductions in catch limits for the 2013 fishing year based on a new stock assessment for the historic groundfish fishery for cod, haddock and flounder. One of the underlying factors in these quota reductions is the missing or inaccurate data on bycatch, which can cause past catch levels to be overly optimistic while unknowingly depleting fisheries.

“156 million pounds of bycatch in the Northeast equals jobs lost and meals wasted,” said Brogan. “What is bycatch to one fishery is often targeted catch to another. Take skates for example, which are a common bycatch species in the lucrative scallop fishery. Nearly 75 percent of the 101 million pounds of skates that were caught were discarded while New England skate fishermen struggle to increase their quotas.”

 

Read the full release from Oceana

 

 

September 19, 2012 — THE Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has given a cautious welcome to the suggestion from a number of parties involved in the global seafood supply chain of forming a global sustainable seafood initiative (GSSI).

The stated aim of this new body is to "enhance and support an efficient, sustainable seafood supply chain, by providing transparent and objective analysis of the credibility, performance and acceptance of the different certification programs that exist within the wild capture and aquaculture sectors." The MSC has given the following response to the idea:

“MSC welcomes the proposal to create a Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative, if we are correct in our understanding of the intent behind the initiative. With the growing number of certification programs as well as other forms of sustainability assurance programs operating in many markets around the world, there is an indisputable need for truly independent review and ranking of the services and claims being made by the various programs, as well as a mechanism to ensure quality control among the programs.

“MSC would be delighted to see a credible, balanced, transparent process to evaluate, benchmark and grade the performance of the various programs providing assurances about sustainability and responsible management in world fisheries. That would be a welcome and needed evolution in the sustainable seafood movement.

 

Read the full story here

 

 

September 18, 2012 — Today, NOAA Fisheries announced that it has awarded $10,000 to the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation in Riverhead, New York. With this funding, the Riverhead Foundation will be able to help NOAA increase the number of trained personnel to more effectively respond to unexplained marine mammal stranding events that involve the die off of a large number of marine mammals, known as Usual Mortality Events, and establish a regional archive for biological samples collected from stranded marine mammals to aid in the study of marine mammal health and infectious disease.

View the full announcement on the NOAA website