Conservation & Environment

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

 

 

 

 

July 31, 2012 — Last fall, you helped in the historical process of beginning to change the way this fishery works. The ASMFC voted to set a new overfishing threshold and target in order to create a sustainable fishery. Now the time has come for the ASMFC to set the rules for the 2013 season and beyond. This is the first time in the history of this fishery that there will be an actual limit placed upon the amount of bunker that can be removed from the waters.

Starting with August 8ths meeting, the ASMFC will be meeting to revise management goals and implement new rules for the commercial harvest of menhaden. As we get closer to the final decision in October, you will begin to hear rumblings from many different angles all in an effort to delay the decision and to avoid catch reduction of any kind. This rhetoric will undoubtedly try to sway public opinion and attempt to derail the management process and utilize the usual “bad science” and “faulty data collection” talk.

We as recreational fisherman and concerned citizens, have had ENOUGH of this talk. We are tired of the future of our waters being determined by commercial financial interests. We are tired of the needs of a few benefiting at the expense of the masses. The ASMFC must not delay in any way and move forward so these fish can rebound NOW.

The facts are in and current data has made it very clear that overfishing has occurred 52 out of the past 54 years. Population levels of this species have dwindled from 200 billion fish down 88% to an all time, century low of 20 billion fish. Older, egg laden adult fish continue to be taken out of our waters in very large numbers and the overall biomass of menhaden has shrunk. Historically, there were evenly distributed schools, with millions of fish of many different ages spread from Florida to Maine and all points in between.

Even in areas such as Raritan Bay, New Jersey, where the bunker are plentiful, the fish are smaller. Yes, there are still some nice size schools present, but the absence of the larger, older adult fish is obvious. Clearly, we need to say goodbye to the large scale, industrialized methods that are strip mining our coastal waters daily.

Read the full story on Stripers Online

Analysis: The article “East Coast: Increase the Population of Menhaden” from Stripers Online states that the issues raised with the validity of recent menhaden stock assessments are, “an attempt to derail the management process” and have only been deployed to prevent regulation of the commercial fishery. This view ignores the many people outside of the menhaden fishery that have concluded that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) does not have the best available science to make management decisions.

The ASMFC’s own Menhaden Technical Committee has pointed out several critical flaws in the 2012 menhaden update stock assessment and the stock assessment model, indicating that it might not be suitable for management advice. At their May 29th meeting, the Committee observed that the update assessment revealed a retrospective pattern, meaning that the estimates in previous population assessments contradicted the population estimates in the current assessment, and needed to be revised in order to fit the more current data. The appearance of retrospective patterns in stock assessments is a sign that a particular assessment model may not be working and that the data being produced is not reliable.

Other issues included inconsistencies between the abundance predictions of adults and juveniles, and using the wrong shaped graphical representation of age distribution caught by the fishery. These issues have led the Technical Committee and Stock the Assessment Subcommittee to consider the recommendation that the ASMFC Menhaden Management Board conduct a new benchmark assessment as soon as possible, rather than using the critically flawed 2012 update to inform the regulatory process.

The menhaden committees of Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission are not the only ones who believe that better science is needed to make good management decisions. In April 2012 several members of Congress wrote to the ASMFC and asked that changes be made to the assessment, such as the inclusion aerial survey data, to ensure more scientifically sound assessments before using them as the basis of management decisions.

The article also states, “current data has made it very clear that overfishing has occurred 52 out of the past 54 years.” However, this is highly inaccurate. According to the last peer reviewed stock assessment in 2010, the occurrences of overfishing have been decreasing. In fact, overfishing has only occurred in two of the last fifteen years.

 

 

 

July 28, 2012 — Being the largest international group aimed at safeguarding aquatic natural habitats and closely monitoring fishing activities carried out in international waters, Oceana has long argued that seafood fraud is a problem which needs to be addressed by authorities and high officials as soon as possible.

The organization now congratulates United States Representatives Edward Markey and Barney Frank for having brought forth this most pressing issue.

For those unaware, seafood fraud refers to practices such as species substitution and false labeling. In other words, illegally caught fish is bound to enter the US market without anyone being even remotely aware of this. Apparently, this happens more often than not with species such as the red snapper, the wild salmon and the Atlantic code.

Thus, said high officials have just introduced the Safety and Fraud Enforcement for Seafood Act (SAFE Seafood, in fewer words). Should this bill be approved, all seafood that enters the US market from that moment on will benefit from full traceability.

This basically means that consumers will know exactly where their meal comes from, and what it took for it to get on their plates.

As explained on Oceana's official website, it is of utmost importance to keep a close eye on these seafood trading operations, primarily because seafood fraud stands to affect local fishermen, public health and also the environment.

Speaking on behalf of the entire organization, Beth Lowell made a case of how, “Representatives Markey and Frank should be applauded for introducing this much-needed legislation to help stop seafood fraud."

Furthermore, "Seafood fraud is cheating customers, hurting honest fishermen and seafood businesses, putting our health at risk and undermining conservation efforts.”

 

Read the full story here

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — July 18, 2012 — Local fishermen aired their concerns Tuesday over the proposed development of offshore wind projects in waters off Massachusetts and Rhode Island to the director of the federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management.

"There is broad consensus in favor of clean energy in the abstract sense. But it's not that simple," BOEM director Tommy Beaudreau told a fisheries working group meeting at City Hall. His agency recognizes that there are "well-established and abundant uses" of the area under consideration, he said. "We need to be respectful and protective of the fishing industry. That's our responsibility."

The bureau has already removed a fish spawning area, known as Cox's Ledge, from the proposed area, Beaudreau said.

However, fishermen are looking for additional safeguards.

Fishery consultant Jim Kendall said that excluding Cox's Ledge was a positive move but questioned whether enough data had been gathered on the environmental impact of the turbines.

"That's a prime monkfish area," he said. "If fishing productivity declines or access is restricted, we need an economic assessment of the effects on fishermen."

Scalloper Eric Hansen said the assessment focused too much on bottom dwelling species. "You have shad, stripers, herring, tuna and whales migrating through there," he said.

The designated area encompasses 165,000 acres in waters southwest of Martha's Vineyard, known as the Area of Mutual Interest after Gov. Deval Patrick and Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri signed a memorandum of understanding in 2010 to collaborate in developing offshore wind.

An environmental assessment of the area was released by BOEM last month and a public comment period ends on Aug. 2.

Professor Kevin Stokesbury, a scallop researcher at UMass Dartmouth's School for Marine Science and Technology, said he wonders how placing hundreds of turbines in the water might affect ocean currents and the distribution of larval scallops.

"It might be detrimental or it could create a bloom. We don't know," he said.

The fishing industry currently sets aside money every year to fund ongoing research and wind developers should be required to do the same, fishermen said.

 

Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

July 18, 2012 — The unintended consequence of protecting mammals such as seals and porpoises could mean even more of an imbalance in the food chain this fall, fishermen fear. Fishermen will be banned by federal law, starting in the autumn, from catching fish in an area where mammals – and groundfish – abound.

If the itty bitty cod are a seal’s favorite meal, and the seals continue to provide gourmet fodder for the Great White sharks, well, someone’s going to need a bigger boat.

Numerous scientists and fishermen have been equating the plethora of shark sightings this summer with the plethora of seals – which sharks crave – as well as with the perplexing absence of cod, which seals chow down in astounding amounts.

The unintended consequence of protecting mammals such as seals and porpoises could mean even more of an imbalance in the food chain this fall, fishermen fear. Fishermen will be banned by federal law, starting in the autumn, from catching fish in an area where mammals – and groundfish – abound.

As previously reported, the ban will not affect Cape Cod, where the bycatch rate of porpoises is less than here, according to a study by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, which regulates fishing. NOAA also charged that the Gloucester boats use “pingers” to scare off mammals only about two-thirds as regularly as the Cape Codders, though local fishermen soundly dispute that.

While the unprecedented overpopulation of seals is mostly around Cape Cod – where an estimated 25 Jaws-like creatures up to 18 feet are having a day at the beach – both species are summering here as well. Capt. Dave Jewell of the Lady J said he is seeing many more seals.

“They’re brutal,” he said, “sneaking in under the net, ripping open the bellies of the cod; stealing lobsters right out of the pots. They opened 140 doors on my tarps in one day lat week.”

Jewell said he spotted a 12-foot great white about 10 feet from his boat last week — just about “a half mile off Gloucester Harbor,” he said, “by Braces Cove.”

Some seals get caught in the nets, when they show up to eat the trapped cod, fishermen and the government agree, but Teri Frady of the NOAA Science Center in Woods Hole said she had no statistics either on the local seal population, how many become bycatch, or how the forthcoming ban on gillnetting might affect them.

In a Canadian study of the Nova Scotia waters in 1985, when cod there were beginning to decline, the seal count was way up, said Brian Rothschild, Montgomery Charter Professor of Marine Science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

“There were unheard of levels of seals,” said Rothschild, “like now, here, especially in Buzzards Bay. We don’t know exactly what’s going on with the cod, but some say the two are interacting in the food cycle. And we do know white sharks eat seals. Even one Great White is a scary thing.”

As Rothschild noted, the case of the mysteriously diminished cod count – NOAA says stocks are down by 22 percent in three years – is a matter of dispute between government and academic scientists.

Come October and November — prime groundfishing time – more than 2,000 square miles of the Gulf of Maine will be off limits to Gloucester’s 32 gillnetters, about half the local fleet, in order to protect what the government says are threatened numbers of porpoises. Protection of seals will be a side effect, experts admit.

The gillnetters are usually small boats, not trawlers, that use finely sized monofilament to catch fish.

“A properly tended stand-up gill net targets specific size fish,” said Mark Godfried, a Gloucester-based longtime fisherman, fish auction grader and corporate consultant. “Hooks are not discriminatory. They can catch little fish that should not be caught.”

 

Read the full story in the Gloucester Times

 

 

July 16, 2012 — Perhaps we can save the whales — or at least their hearing.

Scientists have long known that man-made, underwater noises — from engines, sonars, weapons testing, and such industrial tools as air guns used in oil and gas exploration — are deafening whales and other sea mammals. The Navy estimates that loud booms from just its underwater listening devices, mainly sonar, result in temporary or permanent hearing loss for more than a quarter-million sea creatures every year, a number that is rising.

Now, scientists have discovered that whales can decrease the sensitivity of their hearing to protect their ears from loud noise. Humans tend to do this with index fingers; scientists haven’t pinpointed how whales do it, but they have seen the first evidence of the behavior.

“It’s equivalent to plugging your ears when a jet flies over,” said Paul E. Nachtigall, a marine biologist at the University of Hawaii who led the discovery team. “It’s like a volume control.”

The finding, while preliminary, is already raising hopes for the development of warning signals that would alert whales, dolphins and other sea mammals to auditory danger.

Peter Madsen, a professor of marine biology at Aarhus University in Denmark, said he applauded the Hawaiian team for its “elegant study” and the promise of innovative ways of “getting at some of the noise problems.” But he cautioned against letting the discovery slow global efforts to reduce the oceanic roar, which would aid the beleaguered sea mammals more directly.

The noise threat arises because of the basic properties of seawater. Typically, light can travel for hundreds of feet through ocean water before diminishing to nothingness. But sound can travel for hundreds of miles.

The world’s oceans have been getting noisier as companies and governments expand their undersea activities. Researchers have linked the growing racket to deafness, tissue damage, mass strandings and disorientation in creatures that rely on hearing to navigate, find food and care for their young.

The danger has long been a political football. In 2008, the Supreme Court heard a lawsuit by the National Resources Defense Council against the Navy over ocean noise; the court ruled that naval vessels had the right to test sonar systems for hunting submarines. But environmentalists saw a tacit victory in getting the nation’s highest court even to consider the health of sea mammals in a debate over national security.

The latest development took place at a research facility off Oahu — at an island where the opening shots of “Gilligan’s Island” were filmed.

Scientists there are studying how dolphins and toothed whales hear. In nature, the mammals emit sounds and listen for returning echoes in a sensory behavior known as echolocation. In captivity, scientists taught the creatures to wear suction-cup electrodes, which revealed the patterns of brainwaves involved in hearing.

The discovery came in steps. First, Dr. Nachtigall and his team found the animals could adjust their hearing in response to their own sounds of echolocation, mainly sharp clicks. The scientists then wondered if the animals could also protect their ears from incoming blasts.

The team focused on a false killer whale named Kina and sought to teach her a conditioned behavior similar to how Pavlov taught dogs to salivate upon hearing a bell.

First, the scientists played a gentle tone repeatedly. Then they followed the gentle pulse with a loud sound. After a few trials, the warning signal alone caused Kina to decrease the sensitivity of her hearing.

“It shows promise as a way to mitigate the effects of loud sounds,” said Dr. Nachtigall, founding director of the Marine Mammal Research Program at the University of Hawaii. “People are generally very excited about it.”

In May, Dr. Nachtigall and his colleagues presented the findings to acoustic scientists and groups meeting in Hong Kong, including the Acoustical Society of America. The team cited the protective deafening as a potential way to help sea mammals cope with noisy blasts from naval sonars, civilian air guns and other equipment.

In the future, the team plans to expand the research to other species in captivity and ultimately to animals in the wild. “We have a problem in the world,” Dr. Nachtigall said of the oceanic roar. “And we think the animals can learn this response very rapidly.”

Scientists unconnected to the mammal research called it important. “It’s a big deal,” said Vincent M. Janik, a prominent marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In an e-mail, he said it revealed a rare ability among the planet’s creatures.

 

Read the full story in the New York Times