Conservation & Environment

May 11, 2012 – THE Full Bay Scallop Association in Canada has entered an Atlantic sea scallop fishery into assessment to the Marine Stewardship Council’s standard for sustainable and well-managed fisheries.

If successful, products would be eligible to display the blue MSC ecolabel. The FBSA fleet is comprised of approximately 55 operating vessels ranging in size from 45 to 65 feet.

The fishery takes place in Canadian waters in the North West Atlantic primarily in the Bay of Fundy and Area 29, a nearby fishing zone adjacent to Nova Scotia. Scallop beds in these areas have been commercially fished since the mid-1800s. Total Allowable Catch in this area in 2010-11 was 1,265 tonnes, of which the FBSA client share is 69.5 percent. In 2009, the FBSA fleet landed 831 mt for an approximate value of $12 million. The gear type used is Digby fishing dredge, which is a steel cage towed along the seafloor.

The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans manages the fishery and establishes annual catch limits, fishing areas and management measures, including limited entry licensing, shell size and scallop meat counts based on weight, individual transferable quotas, dockside and vessel monitoring. Every vessel in the FBSA uses a Vessel Monitoring System while fishing In addition, there is 100 per cent dockside observer weigh-out of the harvest and submission of documents for data entry.

The season is open all year with a concentration from early June and to early October. Fishing in Area 29 includes at-sea observer coverage developed in collaboration with the local lobster industry to monitor any lobster bycatch. In the Bay of Fundy, vessels can retain landed monkfish, but all winter skates must be returned to the water with the least amount of harm. In Area 29, all bycatch must be returned causing the least amount of harm.

Read the full story here.

 

 

May 10, 2012 – HONOLULU—The U.S. Navy says its training and testing using sonar and explosives could potentially hurt more dolphins and whales in Hawaii and California waters than previously thought.

The new research and more thorough analysis are part of a draft environmental impact statement covering Navy training and testing planned for 2014-2018. A notice about the study is due to appear in the Federal Register on Friday.

In the study, the Navy estimates its use of explosives and sonar may unintentionally cause more than 1,600 instances of hearing loss or other injury to marine mammals in one year. The service calculates that its use of explosives may inadvertently cause more than 200 marine mammal deaths a year.

The old Navy analysis — covering 2009-2013 — estimated the service might unintentionally cause injury or death to about 100 marine mammals in Hawaii and California, although no deaths have been reported.

The Navy isn't saying it will injure whales and dolphins as it trains sailors and tests equipment. It's telling the public and environmental regulators that its actions have the potential to harm or otherwise prompt a reaction in the animals.

The Navy takes a variety of measures to prevent harm to the animals, including turning off sonar when marine mammals are spotted nearby. It says the actual numbers of injured animals would be lower as a result.

Read the full story from the AP at the Boston Globe.

 

 

May 8, 2012, LIMA, Peru—The carcasses of dead pelicans still litter the beaches of northern Peru, even as the last of nearly 900 dolphins are cleared away.

The mass die-offs have Peruvian scientists searching for a cause and environmentalists raising questions about the government's ability to protect the Pacific nation's marine life, among the world's most abundant thanks to the Humboldt current that hugs most of its 1,500-mile (2,400-kilometer) coast.

After weeks of study, investigators say they think they know why at least 4,450 pelicans have died: Hotter than usual ocean temperatures have driven a type of anchovy deeper into the sea, beyond the reach of many young pelicans.

But Peruvian scientists studying the deaths of dolphins and porpoises from early February to mid-April say it remains a mystery, due in part to the government's slowness in investigating the phenomenon.

Authorities were so late in gathering tissues from the mammals that crucial clues were likely lost, said the scientist heading the dolphin death probe, Armando Hung, head of the molecular biology lab at Cayetano Heredia University.

At the same time, local officials have been so slow in removing carcasses that the Health Ministry urged the public last weekend to stay away from beaches from Lima, the coastal capital, northward, though it did not identify any specific health issue.

Up and down the coast, disoriented pelicans have been seen standing on beaches where they don't normally alight. Some have even been seen walking along coastal roadways.

Beginning at the end of January, daily catches of about 5 tons of anchovetas a day by fishermen in the northern region of Lambayeque dwindled after they began finding the small fish dead on the beach, said Fernando Nique, president of the Puerto Eten fishermen's association.

"After that, we haven't seen any more anchoveta," he said.

Read the full story from the AP at the Boston Globe.

 

 

May 9, 2012 – Like most harbingers of the change of seasons, the 2012 arrival of striped bass to Cape Ann waters occurred very early, too.

The first bass of the fishing season were caught in mid-April, about two weeks ahead of the schedule they've set for themselves in recent times.

Reports of stripers have now come in from all the estuaries from the Annisquam to the Merrimack Rivers. Chris Thomas caught his schoolie near the mouth of the Essex River last Saturday.

The striper's saga historically is a cautionary tale — one of a migratory species that spawned in the great estuaries of the Chesapeake, Delaware and Hudson River systems in such great numbers in Colonial times that the fish were used for fertilizer, then were nearly wiped out by industrial pollution and overfishing.

Then, however, the states unified in a restoration program that brought them back to fecundity over the past 15 years or so.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times.

 

 

SAN FRANCISCO — May 4, 2012 – Crab fishermen working off the Northern California coast have managed to free a gray whale that was tangled in a large fishing line and that had disappeared after a previous rescue attempt, federal wildlife officials said.

Fisherman Mark Anello was out on his 48-foot wooden crab boat Thursday about 3½ miles off the coast near Bodega Bay, located about 67 miles north of San Francisco.

A fourth-generation fisherman, Anello noticed something odd near his boat: three buoys floating nearby were moving. He motored closer to investigate.

Read the complete story by The AP at The Washington Post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 26th, 2012 – An invasion of giant cannibal shrimp into America's coastal waters appears to be getting worse.

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday that sightings of the massive Asian tiger shrimp, which can eat their smaller cousins, were 10 times higher in 2011 than in 2010.

“And they are probably even more prevalent than reports suggest, because the more fisherman and other locals become accustomed to seeing them, the less likely they are to report them,” said Pam Fuller, a USGS biologist.

The shrimp, which can grow to 13 inches long, are native to Asian and Australian waters and have been reported in coastal waters from North Carolina to Texas.

Read the complete story from CNN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW ORLEANS—A big increase in reports of Asian tiger shrimp along the U.S. Southeast coast and in the Gulf of Mexico has federal biologists worried the species is encroaching on native species' territory.

The black-and-white-striped shrimp can grow 13 inches long and weigh a quarter-pound, compared to eight inches and a bit over an ounce for domestic white, brown and pink shrimp. Scientists fear the tigers will bring disease and competition for native shrimp.

Shrimp are all bottom feeders, eating detritus and small animals. Bigger shrimp would eat more and these get so big they also eat small shrimp and fish, marine ecologist James A. Morris said.

Reports of tiger shrimp in U.S. waters rose from a few dozen a year — 21 in 2008, 47 in 2009 and 32 in 2010 — to 331 last year, from North Carolina to Texas.

"That's a big jump," said Pam Fuller, who keeps a federal invasive species database at the U.S. Geological Survey's Southeast Ecological Science Center in Gainesville, Fla.

And those are just the numbers reported to the government.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe

 

 

 

 

 

April 27, 2012 – on April, 18, 2012 the American University Center for Environmental Filmmaking production of The Most Important Fish in the Bay was broadcast on Maryland Public Television. The film examamines the economic and ecological role the fish plays in the Chesapeake Bay. It interviews many different industry stakeholders, including commercial and recreational watermen and environmental advocates.

Watch the film here.

Analysis: American University’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking provides a thorough, well-made, and well-balanced examination of the menhaden fishery in the Chesapeake Bay and the potential impact on the community that proposed fishing regulations would entail. The documentary interviews a variety of sources, from members of the menhaden industry to environmental activists, and gives equal time and consideration to the economic and environmental issues surrounding the menhaden fishery. While the documentary itself is fair and well-balanced, two of the interview subjects, author H. Bruce Franklin and the Director of the Chesapeake Bay’s Fisheries Program Bill Goldsborough, make several incorrect assertions about menhaden.

In the film, the English professor and author, H. Bruce Franklin states, “Menhaden are almost like a giant vacuum cleaner. Sucking from the entire Bay all kinds of excess phytoplankton, each individual menhaden filter four gallons of water a minute, so menhaden play a huge role, by just clarifying the water.” However, there are several scientific studies, including a recent 2010 study from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, that have found that menhaden have a negligible impact on phytoplankton. These studies found that adult menhaden, rather than vacuuming up phytoplankton as Franklin claims, mostly consume zooplankton. Juvenile menhaden do have the ability to filter phytoplankton, but their efforts do not lead to a significant improvement in water quality.
 
Bill Goldsborough of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, when discussing menhaden, says, “they are at their lowest point on record. And that’s an over 50 year-long record. They are down to less than 10 percent of what they once were.” Franklin makes a similar claim.
 
While this statistic is often cited as a reason for sharp reductions in the commercial menhaden harvest, other factors likely play a greater role. Menhaden spawning is much more influenced by environmental factors than by the amount of fish removed by commercial fishing. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) noted in its 2010 stock assessment that it was likely that the changes in the menhaden population “are almost entirely driven by non-fishery sources” (pg. 91). The ASMFC also concluded that the stock was currently not overfished. This means that the fecundity rate (the estimation of reproductive potential based on number of eggs) has been maintained at a high enough level to ensure sustainability. The lower population levels of menhaden are thus likely not to be the result of lack of available spawners, but of the poor water conditions in the Chesapeake Bay or other environmental factors.

 

 

April 22, 2012 – More than 2,000 scientists from 67 countries urged Arctic leaders, in an open letter released today by the Pew Environment Group, to develop an international fisheries accord that would protect the unregulated waters of the Central Arctic Ocean. New maps show that the loss of permanent sea ice has opened up as much as 40 percent of this pristine region during recent summers, making industrial fishing viable for the first time.

"Scientists recognize the crucial need for an international agreement that will prohibit the start of commercial fishing until research-based management measures can be put in place,” said Henry Huntington, the Pew Environment Group’s Arctic science director. “There’s no margin for error in a region where the melting sea ice is rapidly changing the marine ecosystem.”

More than 60 percent of the scientists who signed the letter, released on the first day of the International Polar Year 2012 science conference in Montreal, are from one of the five Arctic coastal countries—Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway, and Greenland/Denmark.

Read the full story at the Pew Environment Group.

 

 

April 26, 2012 – The New England Fishery Management Council Wednesday grappled with pending implementation of a NOAA decision to give Atlantic sturgeon the extreme protection of the Endangered Species Act all along the Atlantic coast.

Although there is not even a rough outline of the protective action, the development is destined to come at a heavy price paid by commercial fishermen, especially gillnetters, whose gear can snare the ancient giant that swims along the inshore waters and breeds in rivers.

Ron Smolowitz of the Fishery Survival Fund predicted an impact on commercial fishing that rivals the listing the "spotted owl" had on logging in the Pacific Northwest, making "protected habitat" of millions of acres.

NOAA estimates the survival rate of sturgeon hauled up in fishermen's bycatch — collateral fish pulled up when fishermen are targeting other species — is remarkably high, at roughly 80 percent from gillnets, 95 percent for sturgeon hauled up in trawl nets.

"I've probably caught two sturgeon in 35 years," said Richard Burgess, who owns and operates multiple gillnet boats based in Gloucester. "This year alone, our 36 boats (in the Gloucester gillnet sector) have released four to five alive."

Burgess said the last time he caught one was 2001.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times.