Conservation & Environment

August 10, 2012 — Arctic sea ice coverage has been declining for decades, and 2011 set a record for the lowest amount of coverage ever recorded—a record we’re currently threatening to break. Less ice and more open water means the region will soon be available for additional human activity.

Shipping companies and cruise lines are already utilizing new routes, taking advantage of the long-sought northwest passage from Europe and North America to Asia. And as soon as next week, Shell Oil could receive the green light to begin drilling up to five new exploratory oil-and-gas wells off the north slope of Alaska. As Big Oil prepares to exploit the emerging resources and access, the fishing industry has chosen to take a very different approach—one the oil companies should heed.

In August 2009 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration formally approved a proposal by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to ban all fishing activity in the U.S. Arctic except subsistence fishing by Alaska Natives. Members of the council—the majority of which is comprised of fishing industry representatives—voted unanimously to recommend the prohibition. In a remarkably forward-looking move, the body also opted to close the nearly 150,000-square-mile Arctic Management Area (see Figure 1) until adequate scientific fish stock assessments and other data could be collected that would ensure this virgin resource could be managed sustainably.

This move gained the support of environmental organizations such as Oceana, The Ocean Conservancy, and the Pew Environment Group, as well as Alaska’s biggest coalition of fishing industry interests—the Marine Conservation Alliance, which represents more than two-thirds of the state’s groundfishermen and crabbers.

The fishing industry’s approach to management stands in direct contrast to that taken by the oil-and-gas industry and its federal regulators. Shell has led Big Oil’s charge into the Arctic Ocean and is on the cusp of receiving final permits that could allow them to begin drilling operations there as soon as next week. Logic would dictate this means we know more about the science of oil in the Arctic than we do about the science of fish. Not so.

The same lack of knowledge about baseline environmental conditions in the region that has caused fishermen and their regulators to hit the pause button have not slowed the oil industry. While Shell and other oil companies have committed resources to research projects such as the Chukchi Sea Environmental Studies Program, they are not waiting to see data from these efforts before plowing forward with drilling operations.

Where the fishing industry has taken a reasoned, methodical approach, oil and gas and their regulators are operating full speed ahead, though Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has insisted that Shell’s permits would be issued “under the most watched program in the history of the United States.”

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard has ramped up its Arctic effort, driven primarily by the need to babysit Shell’s drilling operations. To do this it will have to reallocate ships, helicopters, and personnel that would otherwise be dedicated to its traditional missions including migrant and drug interdiction, search and rescue, and fisheries enforcement. And it’s already desperately lacking in Arctic-capable resources, with just one seaworthy icebreaking vessel currently afloat (our two others are in drydock awaiting funding for lengthy and expensive repairs). “The Coast Guard has zero capability in the Arctic,” admitted the service’s commandant, Adm. Robert Papp, last month.

 

Read the full story on the Center for American Progress

 

CHATHAM, Mass. — August 10, 2012 — In 19 years of lobstering, Ben Bergquist has seen plenty of whales but never one entangled in fishing gear. That doesn't mean he hasn't experienced the effect of those tragedies at sea.

He spent $20,000 a few years ago to comply with regulations meant to reduce the chances a loop of rope would get caught in a whale's mouth, front flippers or tail.

But he knows that isn't enough.

On Thursday night, Bergquist joined 50 other fishermen at the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association in becoming certified in the first of five levels of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's whale disentanglement program. Each level comes with an increased level of responsibility, training and skill.

While there was little hands-on training and a lot of information on how the program works, Bergquist and others felt it was important to show they are willing to help protect the region's whale populations, many of which are either threatened or potentially facing extinction.

"I think it's become kind of a necessity to take a proactive approach," Bergquist said. "We don't want to entangle whales. We're just guys with families trying to make a living."

NOAA looks to certify professional mariners like fishermen, marine patrol officers, naturalists and others with boating experience at that first level to put more people on the water who know what to do and what not to do.

At the top level are people such as Scott Landry, director of the whale rescue program at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, who cuts the lines and frees snarled whales.

What not to do, Landry told fishermen at Thursday's session, is to attempt to free the whale, even if they have the best of intentions.

In a whale rescue earlier this year off Province-

town, someone attempted to free a small whale by cutting through the line off its tail that anchored it to the bottom by a series of lobster pots. If the person had been successful, a whale encased in line from nose to tail would have been freed, and difficult to find.

At the entry level, fishermen would be expected to report a whale in trouble and stand by the animal until certified rescuers arrive and assess the type of gear and the extent of entanglement.

Their expertise in knowing what kind of a whale had become ensnared in could actually prove more important than freeing it, Jamison Smith, NOAA's large whale disentanglement coordinator for the Northeast, told the group because it could show the effectiveness of gear changes or lead to other whale-saving innovations.

Chatham lobsterman Will Martin said he thought the session was informative. He'd never seen the graphic images of what happens to whales that are cut and weighted down by lines and gear.

"We've been doing this already. It just makes it official," said Jim Nash, a Chatham gillnet fisherman who helped put the training session together.

Nash sits on a NOAA whale advisory committee that helps come up with solutions to the problem. He said fishermen are working to help fix the problem of whales becoming caught in their gear.

 

Read the full story in the Cape Cod Times

 

 

PORTLAND, Maine — August 8, 2012 — The state is committed to a plan that would allow alewives to return to the St. Croix River above a dam that blocks their passage, but only in a gradual manner and not in an unrestricted fashion that environmental groups and Maine Indian tribes are calling for, Maine's attorney general said Wednesday in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA last month sent a letter to Attorney General William Schneider saying a Maine law that bars alewives, or river herring, upriver of the Grand Falls dam violates the federal Clean Water Act, and that Maine should take action to allow alewives upriver of the dam. Advocates of restoring alewives to the river's full watershed had hoped the EPA's letter would force the state to open the dam's fish passages and allow the fish upriver.

But in his response, Schneider wrote that the law, known as the alewife law, is valid, and that the state never intended to apply it for purposes of the Clean Water Act. That stance is opposed by the Conservation Law Foundation, which has sued the EPA in hopes of giving alewives full river access.

"The state has always regarded the alewife law as a fisheries management measure with meaning and effect only in that context; it has never considered the statute to be a CWA water quality standard," Schneider wrote.

Schneider's letter is the latest step in an ongoing dispute about whether alewives should be allowed full access to the St. Croix River, which serves as a boundary between Maine and New Brunswick.

The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation filed a lawsuit against the EPA in May to require the agency to force Maine to allow the fish to return to their natural habitat above the Grand Falls dam. The CLF claimed that not doing so violates the Clean Water Act.

The Passamaquoddy Tribe and other groups have also pushed to have the river opened to alewives.

 

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

 

 

July 25, 2012 — The following is an excerpt from a Greenpeace petition on Atlantic menhadem.

The most important fish in the sea need your help. Last November, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) responded to scientific evidence of a severe decline in menhaden—and more than 90,000 comments from people like you—and took a historic first step to help the recovery of Atlantic menhaden. The commission initiated a plan to significantly increase the number of menhaden left in the ocean, a move that would benefit and protect sport fish, seabirds, whales, and thousands of fishing-related businesses and bird and whale watching operations that depend on these fish.

There is still no limit on how many menhaden are taken from the Atlantic Ocean. Every year, hundreds of millions of these fish are hauled in and ground up, reduced to fish meal and oil for use as dietary supplements, fertilizer, and feed for farm animals, pets, and aquaculture.

Don’t let the menhaden industry derail the plan to restore this critically important fish. The ASMFC needs to hear from you! Urge the commission to make good on its commitment to restore the menhaden population.

View the petition here.

Analysis: On July 25, Greenpeace published a petition, “Keep Menhaden Recovery On Track,” advocating for officials at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to implement new regulations on Atlantic menhaden. The text is virtually identical to a menhaden petition published on July 23 by Peter Baker, Director of the Northeast Fisheries Program for the Pew Environment Group, and both petitions contain the same misleading arguments about the menhaden fishery. The result is an exaggerated view of the Atlantic menhaden population that is more dire than the reality, and one that minimizes the many aspects of the menhaden science and management process that are currently in dispute.

The petitions contain several inaccuracies and selective quoting of facts. For example, they state, “overfishing has occurred in 32 of the last 54 years,” but fails to mention that in the last 15 years, overfishing of menhaden has only occurred twice, most recently in 2008 by only .04%. Similarly, they neglect to mention that the menhaden stock is at its target abundance (the number of eggs being produced by the population), which is almost twice the level it would need to be in order for the stock to be considered overfished.

In the petitions, the organizations also ask the public to demand that menhaden management be based on the 2012 menhaden update stock assessment. Not mentioned is that because of issues such as a pattern of contradictory historical population estimates, and incorrect assumptions about the age distribution of fish caught by the fishery, the members of the ASMFC Menhaden Technical Committee have deemed that assessment to be severely flawed and not reliable for management purposes. They also neglect to include the results of a recent aerial survey of the northern range of the menhaden population in the North Atlantic, which indicates that the coast-wide menhaden stock may be twice as large as the ASMFC is currently estimating.

 

 

SUNDERLAND, Mass. — August 5, 2012 — The dream seemed tantalizingly within reach: restoring majestic Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut River, where dams had blocked the waterway so completely the overfished population became extinct.

Now, almost 50 years and more than $25 million later, the federal government is giving up on restocking the river.

The coveted sport fish follow an intricate, circuitous life journey along the 407-mile long Connecticut. Born in tributaries, they swim to the ocean off Greenland before returning to that same tributary to spawn the next generation. Many of their most daunting foes — dams — are now equipped with fish ladders and lifts, allowing the easiest passage in centuries for the salmon.

But the fish confront a new nemesis: the changing ocean. So few Connecticut salmon today are surviving their arduous sea journey — a tenfold decline since the early 1990s — federal officials say they can no longer justify spending money to save them. This year, only 54 fish ­returned to the Connecticut River.

No one knows exactly why, although theories abound, including the consequences of climate change.

“We really thought this was going to work . . . but the quality of the ocean is changing,’’ Mickey Novak, longtime hatchery manager at the Richard Cronin National Salmon Station in Sunderland, said as he stood in a concrete holding pool with one of the silver fish writhing in his hands.

A decision has not been made about whether the station will remain open.

The Connecticut’s story is a painful lesson about the challenge of repairing nature — and an ominous indicator for Atlantic salmon in more northern locales. Maine salmon populations are nowhere near levels that would allow them to be self-sustaining without stocking despite decades of effort, and scientists worry that the fish — or the funding — may disappear before they figure out how to save them.

 

Read the full story at the Boston Globe.

 

 

CHATHAM, Mass. — August 1, 2012 — A flourishing seal population is the reason experts say they’ve seen an increasing number of Great White sharks in the area.

And now, two days after a Great White shark attacked a beachgoer in Truro, local fishermen are pointing out that it’s not the sharks; it’s the seals that are causing most of the problems in the area.

Seals are protected under a 1976 congressional act. In the decades since, Chatham’s seal population has exploded from a few hundred to almost 10,000.

The animals have become popular with sightseeing tourists, but they’re also a major threat to the fishing industry.

“They’re putting us out of business. They’re eating way too much,” Chatham-based fisherman John Our said.

 

Read the full story from CBS Boston.

 

 

August 1, 2012 — For the first time since a fatal encounter in 1936, human blood has been drawn by a great white shark in Massachusetts waters. Fortunately, this week’s victim is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, having suffered severe lacerations to his legs. While shark bites are extremely rare, it probably won’t take another 76 years for the next unprovoked attack locally.

Great white sharks are not common. They’re predators at the business end of the food chain. By nature, they number far fewer than the populations of prey that support them. State officials have tagged just six in Massachusetts waters this summer. Three tagged last summer have returned. State shark biologist Greg Skomal thinks there might be one or two untagged whites hanging around. That’s fewer than a dozen overall in Massachusetts waters this summer.

But that’s a dozen more than used to skirt the beaches of Chatham and Truro and Orleans. The sharks are back, because the seals are back.

Seals Came First

“When you hear a 95-year-old on the dock in Chatham say he’s never seen this many seals before in his life, he’s telling the truth,” Skomal said. Grey seals were nearly wiped out by 1900. They were competition for valuable fishing stocks. Massachusetts offered bounties on seals until 1962.

But in 1972, a new federal law prevented harming and harassing seals. Over the last 40 years, the grey seal population in Massachusetts has rebounded. They now number in the thousands here.

And following the growing abundance of prey are the predators.

We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Acoustic Array

While fishermen complain that the seals are catching their fish, the bigger economic interest is in beach communities, where fear of the sharks on the seals’ tails could take a bite out of tourism dollars.

So Massachusetts has deployed an acoustic array of underwater receivers that pick up the signals of sharks tagged with sound pingers called transponders. But each receiver only detects tagged sharks swimming within a few hundred yards. At $1,400 each, the devices are expensive.

They’re also costly to maintain, especially those farther from shore. Some wash away each year. So the state has deployed acoustic receivers where sharks are sighted more often: on the lower half of the eastern edge of the Cape, from Orleans to Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

“The problem is,” Skomal said, “… we have no receivers between Orleans and Truro.”

Truro, close to the northern edge of the Cape, is where this week’s attack happened. Skomal thinks the shark mistook the swimmer for a seal.

 

Read the full story here

 

 

August 2, 2012 — The white shark state officials believe bit a man swimming off Truro Monday was likely looking for a more blubbery victim. A burgeoning seal population has drawn the fearsome fish closer to Cape Cod's shores, primarily off Monomoy Island in Chatham.

But both the seals and the sharks that eat them are far from stationary. Gray seals use several areas around the Cape and Islands as haul-outs, where they rest and mate, or rookeries, where they give birth to their pups.

"The seal population on Cape Cod is quite dynamic," said Brian Sharp, stranding coordinator for the International Fund for Animal Welfare headquartered in Yarmouthport.

There are three primary haul-outs on the Cape: Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge; sand bars on the ocean side of North Truro; and Jeremy Point, a peninsula of land that hangs like a stalactite from Wellfleet's Great Island into Cape Cod Bay.

Muskeget Island west of Nantucket is home to the largest pupping colony of gray seals on the East Coast with 2,095 pups counted during the 2007 and 2008 season.

The largest Cape haul-out on Monomoy hosts thousands of seals and has also been used as a pupping site, according to Sharp and other marine mammal experts.

But gray seals, which can grow to six feet and 400 to 800 pounds, can be found on beaches throughout the region, Sharp said.

Seal populations in the United States were decimated during a long-standing bounty program and prior to the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. Since then, seals from Canada, including a large rookery on Sable Island more than 100 miles off Nova Scotia, have reinvigorated the population of seals in the U.S.

In the 1970s there were only about 500 seals in the waters around the Cape, said naturalist Dennis Murley with the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. That number could now be 10,000 to 15,000, he said.

On Jeremy Point, the increase was coupled with a shift in species from a population dominated by harbor seals to one now made up primarily of gray seals depending on the time of year, Murley said.

There are three basic conditions that make a location more ideal for seal haul-outs, seal experts said.

The first is easy access to deep water.

Because the tide recedes so far on cup-shaped Cape Cod Bay, seals are unlikely to set up shop on beaches deep inside it, Murley said. Second, seals need an abundant food source. Here, that includes sand eels and fish. Many local fishermen complain seals have decimated the striped bass population but wildlife experts say that's not true.

 

Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

August 2, 2012 — Morgan Freeman, Ted Danson and others attend a Laguna Beach hilltop fundraiser for the ocean conservation organization.

On Sunday evening, Ted Danson, Morgan Freeman, Alexandra Cousteau and dozens of others attended a fundraising soiree for Oceana at a Laguna Beach hilltop ocean view home known as Villa dei Sogni. The Oceana organization works on campaigns to help the Earth's seas thrive once again.

Freeman was on hand discussing issues. But he wasn't talking about acting or directing. He was sharing his concerns about the health of the world's oceans. Freeman is an avid sailor and, for the past 45 years, he has witnessed the destruction of the "blue water."

"[We have been] filling up the oceans with garbage and mercury," said Freeman. "We have two major life support systems on the planet … the forest and the ocean. And what do you think we're doing to both of them? We're doing our best to destroy them. That's not in our own interest. We're not shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that … we're shooting ourselves in the head." 

"To talk about it sounds hopeless," said Freeman. "But we have to educate people. Oceana is busy trying to do that. This is reversible."

Since 2001, the Oceana organization has asked scientists, economists, lawyers and advocates to work together for the protection of marine flora and fauna and their habitats.

The organization has achieved several goals already in 2012. To name only a few, sea turtle deflecting devices must be used by the Atlantic scallop fishing industry, Chile has increased the size of two marine preserve areas, and the California Senate Committee on Health passed a seafood labeling bill affecting "human health, environmental sustainability, and consumer protection." 

Acting as master of ceremonies for the evening was Oceana senior advisor Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.

"Ocean conservation is very close to my heart," said Cousteau, "and Oceana is a very special organization. Growing up as a Cousteau, I was introduced to the ocean at the youngest of ages … I was fortunate enough to see a lot of really beautiful places. But I've also watched them disappear."

"The urgency is very real," said Cousteau. "and the work that Oceana does I think is really addressing the critical issues and offering concrete and meaningful solutions."

Cousteau believes that overfishing has to be addressed, more marine protected areas have to be created, and people need to make different decisions about how they live and consume.

She encouraged the eating of sustainable seafood. She added that wallet-sized guides to sustainable fish, available through the Monterey Bay Aquarium, are available to help diners make better choices at restaurants.

Cousteau said, "We always eat the same 12 or 15 species. Don't choose orange roughy, Chilean sea bass, swordfish or tuna. So many of these species are on the brink of collapse or endangered. Choose other options. Here in the United States, there are almost 700 species of fish that are not only edible but tasty."

She added that humans must be mindful of what they put down the drain, because whatever goes down the drain winds up in the ocean.

 

Read the full story here.

 

 

August 1, 2012 — The booming, federally protected seal population basking in Bay State waters will only bring more hungry, dead-eyed great white sharks closer to shore — where they can strike in as little as 6 feet of water, experts warn.

State wildlife officials said yesterday they’re tracking nine great whites — the most they’ve ever had tagged — but it’s not clear whether that lethal group includes the stealthy predator that attacked a bodysurfer off Ballston Beach in Truro on Monday afternoon, splattering blood on the beach.

The victim, Christopher Myers, is recovering from leg injuries at Massachusetts General Hospital in what officials called the first attack by a great white in Massachusetts since a fatal strike in 1936.

Swarming the Cape coast in pockets from Eastham to Chatham, seals — a protected species for the past four decades — are being blamed for the sudden spike in shark sightings.

“Nature is out of balance,” said Michael Snell, a former Truro beach commissioner. “Until we start harvesting seals, we are going to keep having these kind of problems.”

Wildlife experts warn that seal preservation and swimmer safety are on a collision course.

“It’s a smoke signal to start thinking about our conservation policies, and whether they’re really moving us toward sustainability or something else,” said Brian Rothschild, a marine science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

“Society has some tough decisions to make,” he said. “Most people believe the seals are attracting the sharks, and the only thing they can do is control the seal population. But to do that would require a revision of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and that’s a big deal.”

The 1972 federal law forbids killing marine mammals, with rare and limited exceptions. The result, experts said, has laid out a blubbery feast of seals all the way up to Canada’s Maritime Provinces.

Prior to the law, towns offered bounties on seals, controlling their numbers as a means of conservation similar to deer hunting, Rothschild said. But 40 years of strictly enforced federal protection have left the waters thick with shark bait, and locals have taken notice.

Greg Skomal, a shark biologist with the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Marine Fisheries, said his program has been monitoring the shark population in Bay State waters since 2009. He sees no retreat in the numbers — and humans have to learn to live with it.

 

Read the full story in the Boston Herald