Conservation & Environment

It was the largest shark kill the Texas game wardens had ever seen. Last week, wildlife officials discovered an estimated 3,000 sharks caught and killed in an illegal gill net off South Padre Island in the Gulf of Mexico.

Gill nets hang underwater from floats to a lead-weighted bottom line like mesh curtains, often extending up to 5 miles in length and 25 feet in depth. Notorious for their bycatch threat to sea turtles, marine mammals (such as, sea otters, dolphins and whales), sea birds, and other non-target fish, gill net possession has been illegal in Texas since 1981.
 
"This is by far the most sharks I have ever gotten in one load. Myself and my deck hand have been working on this boat for 15 years and have never seen this many sharks in one net,” said Sgt. James Dunks. Indeed, Texas Parks and Wildlife regulations prohibit licensed fishers from catching more than one shark per day.

Read the complete story from Earth Justice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coral reefs have been dying off at alarming rates because of modern human activity, and conservationists struggle to preserve them. Now scientists have found such efforts have a long history.

By the beginning of the 15th century, native Hawaiian islanders were engaging in sustainable practices to preserve their reefs — ushering in 400 years of recovery.

The research, published Monday in the journal PLoS One, shows that sustainable practices go back a long way and that coral reefs may be better able to regenerate than previously thought.

Coral reefs are some of the world's richest ecosystems, supporting a diverse array of marine life, including reef fish and mollusks. But they're highly susceptible to modern-day threats such as changing water temperatures, pollution and aggressive fishing practices.

Read the complete story from The LA Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orange County hostesses Valarie Van Cleave and Eve Kornyei pulled out all the stops Saturday evening, as Hollywood and Washington, D.C. glitterati converged on the Laguna Beach estate of Karen and Bruce Cahill for the 4th annual SeaChange dinner and fundraiser.

It was a smashing success attracting some 400 guests. The al fresco gathering on the spectacular hillside of the Cahill villa, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, raised more than $900,000 for Oceana, the world's largest ocean conservation society. It's headquartered in the nation's capital.

This was an evening of great passion centered on a cause that effects every creature on the planet, both on land and under the sea. Oceana is both a watchdog and an instrument of leadership working with multiple layers of worldwide government, business and culture.

In spite of criticism of such efforts from voices advocating no restriction on the pursuit of free enterprise as they harvest the bounty of the world's oceans, Oceana works through legislative action to ensure that enterprise unchecked and imbalanced does not decimate such finite resources.

Surely, responsible world citizens have learned via example over the last century that the Earth's resources are not a free-for-all grab in a climate of laissez-faire entrepreneurship, or one that's open to the first to take.

Read the complete story from The Daily Pilot

 

 

 

 

The tiny Atlantic menhaden, often called "the most important fish in the sea," plays an important role in marine ecosystems from Maine to Florida. The fish is a critical food source for wildlife such as whales, dolphins, ospreys and eagles, as well as valuable fish species like tuna, cod, striped bass and tarpon.

The Atlantic menhaden population has plummeted to less than 10 percent of historic levels and are now at a record low point. The reason for this decline is that billions are hauled in and ground up, removed from their ecosystem mostly to be used in fertilizer, pet food, dietary supplements, and feed for for agricultural animals and farm-raised fish.

By weight, more menhaden are caught than any other fish on the East Coast. One company, Omega Protein, operates a fleet that each year scoops up about three-quarters of the entire East Coast catch—more than 410 million pounds. Most of that catch comes from the Chesapeake Bay, a critical habitat for juvenile menhaden.

The menhaden shortage is having a significant effect on the entire ecosystem. While menhaden once made up 70 percent of a striped bass' diet, they now account for 7 percent—and the bass are showing marked signs of malnutrition and disease. Scientists suspect that the impacts of dwindling menhaden may be much more widespread. The shortage threatens the East Coast's marine food web and could cripple commercial and sport fishing industries. The striped bass generates $6.9 billion and 68,000 jobs for the commercial and recreational fishing industries on the East Coast.

Despite its documented impact, menhaden fishing continues at levels that are destructive to the ocean ecosystem: Safe fishing targets have been exceeded every year but one since 1955. As a result, people who value our oceans, concerned scientists, and the Pew Environment Group are calling for a plan to conserve the last remaining menhaden.

Read the full article at the Pew Environment Group.

Read their petition here.

Analysis: The article misrepresents several facts about the menhaden fishery. Most importantly, the menhaden fishery is currently not overfished. According to the most recent stock assessment by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the organization responsible for regulating the menhaden fishery, menhaden are not currently overfished. Slight overfishing did occur in 2008; however, this is the only time the population has experienced overfishing in the last ten years, and while fishing slightly exceeded the mortality rate, the abundance rate was still on target.

It is also misleading of Pew to say that menhaden are at "less than 10 percent of historic levels." Menhaden are currently fished to 8% of their Maximum Spawning Potential (MSP), which, rather than being a historical figure, is a population estimate of a theoretical unfished population. Very rarely have menhaden exceeded 10% MSP in the past few decades, as the population has traditionally been able to rebuild itself at that level, given the high number of eggs an individual menhaden can produce.

The article is also misleading in its assessment that the variations in the amount of menhaden in striped bass diet is due entirely to the reduction fishery. A recent survey by the Virginia Institute for Marine Science places the percentage of menhaden in striped bass diet at around 9%. However, this number fluctuates for a variety of reasons, including the prevalene of other prey species and the relative locations of menhaden and bass schools. Bass are opportunistic eaters and are not dependent on one species of fish.

 

 

WASHINGTON—Wildlife officials have tried shooting them with rubber bullets, chasing them with boats and scaring them with flares. Nothing has worked for long. Now federal lawmakers took the first step Wednesday toward making it easier for states and Indian tribes to kill some of the California sea lions that feast on endangered and threatened salmon in the Columbia River.

The population of California sea lions has steadily grown over the past three decades and now numbers nearly 250,000. About 75 of them make their way nearly 140 miles up the Columbia River to feed on smelt and salmon. They congregate near the Bonneville Dam on the border of Washington and Oregon where fish gather and pass through a series of ladders on their way to spawning grounds.
By a vote of 29-13, a House committee passed a bill that would speed up the application process that states and Indian tribes undertake when obtaining a permit to kill sea lions. Under the legislation, a single permit would allow applicants to kill up to 10 sea lions in a single year.
Supporters of the legislation argue that the sea lions are not indigenous to that portion of the Columbia River. The sea lions have adapted to the easy supply of food at the dam and are removing a precious resource that state and federal governments have spent billions of dollars to protect.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON — Environmental projects across the Chesapeake Bay watershed will receive $10.9 million in grants.

The Chesapeake Bay Program says grants announced Wednesday will support 55 projects to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment runoff. Matching funds to be provided by grant recipients mean a total of $27 million will be going toward the projects.

Nitrogen and phosphorus are nutrients that spur algae blooms, which cloud water and lower oxygen levels. Sediment clouds water and can bury grass beds and oyster reefs.

The grants include $400,000 to the University of Maryland to reduce fertilizer runoff from lawns and improve soil conditions. A $600,000 grant to Water Stewardship Inc. will be used to reduce nutrient pollution on Virginia farms.

Read the complete story in The Washington Post

 

 

 

 

 

The following was released by the Coonamesset Farm Foundation: The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) recently took action to reduce injury to sea turtles.  The action requires the use of a new scallop dredge design that greatly reduces the risk of injury to sea turtles encountered during fishing operations. The dredge design, known as the Cfarm Turtle Deflector Dredge (TDD), evolved over several years’ research led by the Coonamessett Farm Foundation (CFF).
 
CFF, a non-profit research and education foundation, is funded by grants from the sea scallop industry’s research set aside (scallop RSA) program and the National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). The CFF is working with a diverse team of scientists and fishermen in a major effort to understand how the fishery is affecting the loggerhead sea turtle. Edward Welch, a New Bedford scallop captain for over 40 years said that “the first turtle I caught was in 2001 and I knew then we had to do something.”
 
The scallop fishery interacts with predominantly loggerhead sea turtles during the summer and fall in the Mid-Atlantic. Interactions between sea turtles and dredges are thought to occur in the water column during haul back as well as on the sea floor during active fishing.  In 2003, over 750 loggerheads were estimated caught and with an injury rate estimated at 64%.
 
An initial CFF and Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) research effort led to the development of turtle chain mats to prevent turtles from entering the dredge when the gear is being hauled back through the water. The highly successful chain mats all but eliminated turtles from being captured by scallop dredges.  Ronald Smolowitz, the designer of the chain mat, points out that “Although the chain mats greatly reduced sea turtle capture in scallop dredges, they did not eliminate the potential risk of a turtle being run over and injured by a dredge on the seafloor.” For several years, Smolowitz’s team of CFF researchers worked with the scallop industry and NEFSC to develop a turtle deflector dredge to further reduce the severity of impact and mortality of sea turtles from potential interactions on the sea floor.
 
In 2005, CFF, NEFSC and Southeast Fisheries Science Center conducted a study using sea turtles that died as a result of strandings.  The carcasses were placed in the path of a standard New Bedford dredge to evaluate interactions and injuries.  Prototypes of a modified dredge were also developed and tested.  In 2008, again working with the NEFSC, the turtle deflector dredge was evaluated in Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts. Nine sea turtle carcasses were used in the tests and five recovered carcasses were evaluated for injuries. The only observed carcass damage was superficial scratches and chips.  The tests were also captured on video that showed all carcasses hit the dredge at some point and passed over the dredge frame.
 
The new TDD design makes it highly likely that a turtle will not be run over by the dredge, and the TDD is expected to decrease injuries to turtles by 56% and possibly eliminate serious injuries altogether.
 
Deirdre Boelke, the Scallop Plan Coordinator for the NEFMC believes the Council’s recent decision to recommend implementation of the TDD in the scallop fishery was a very positive action that will have real and measurable benefits for sea turtles.  “From start to finish, this gear modification is an ideal example of how the Council process can and should work. A problem was identified, a solution was devised, industry partnered with appropriate researchers to test it, and finally the management process developed and analyzed a range of alternatives with input from the public and NMFS.  CFF took the lead in developing this solution. Implementation of the TDD will serve as a great acknowledgement of their dedication and hard work.”    
 
To further understand the behavior of the turtles and their population status, the Coonamessett Farm Foundation (CFF) is collaborating with the NEFSC and others.  The research involves the use of dredge mounted video cameras, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), and satellite tags placed on captured turtles. Recent work supported by the satellite tracking studies, indicates that more than 800,000 loggerheads live in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.

 
Note: Pictures are available at http://www.coonamessettfarmfoundation.org in the photo gallery

Oceana, the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the world’s oceans, commends the New England Fishery Management Council today for approving new regulations for the Atlantic scallop fishery that will require modified fishing gear in specified areas and during times when sea turtles are known to be present. The new fishing gear, called a Turtle Deflector Dredge (TDD), works by pushing sea turtles out of harm’s way. In fact, TDDs are expected to reduce sea turtle mortality by at least 56 percent when compared to former dredges that forced them under the heavy fishing gear where they were often crushed or dragged until they drowned.

 

Read the full Oceana press release here…

 

 

Ron Smolowitz, of the Fisheires Survival Fund and Coonamesset Farms who designed and engineered new Turtle Deflector Dredges (TDD), explains in the below linked release, why TDDs are a crucial innovation, and why he helped the commerical scallop industry make it happen.

 

Read Ron Smolowitz's press release here…

 

 

 

 

THIS COLUMN is a request that you put on your best letter-writing hat, warm up your computer, get out your old typewriter or get a pad of nice stationery and a pen. Do whatever it takes to send letters to the people who need to listen. This appeal is especially aimed at fishermen, like me, who remember the good old days.

When my children were young, we caught big — I mean really big — blues just below and above the Chesapeake Bay bridge. I am talking about 12-pound fish caught on poppers. My personal biggest blue weighed 17 pounds and was caught in the lower bay.

Why did we catch them then and not now? Because of the lack of menhaden, also called bunker or mossbunker. There used to be a lot of them. The bluefish followed them up the bay. They are considered by marine biologists, the most important part of a rockfish's diet.

Today, scientific estimates place the population of menhaden at 8 percent of what it was before exploitation. Studies of rockfish diets say that menhaden comprise 8 percent of current striped bass diets. Historically, menhaden were as much as 70 percent of striper diets. They are also an important food source for weakfish, sharks, sea turtles, ospreys, pelicans and loons.

More than a few people in the know think that this lack of proper diet is what makes striped bass (also known as rockfish) susceptible to mycobacteriosis, which causes infected fish to slowly lose body mass and weight, and other diseases.

Watermen complain that rockfish are eating crabs. Well, sure, if you can't have ham and eggs, you eat cereal.

On the subject of eating, what menhaden eat positions them where they are in the food chain. Menhaden are filter feeders. They strain plankton, tiny plants and animals suspended in the water column. They convert the plankton into food for creatures higher in the food chain. It is natural.

What is unnatural and needs to be changed is the unrestrained harvesting of bunker by the fleets of factory ships that use airplanes to spot the schools. The schools of fish are encircled by large purse seine nets, then pumped into the ships and are processed to make fish oil, poultry food and other products.

Read the full article at the Frederick News Post.

Analysis: The article makes several misleading claims about the overall state of the menhaden fishery. The first is that the menhaden population is dangerously overfished. According to the ASMFC, not only is the menhaden fishery not overfished, but it has only experienced overfishing once in the last ten years. The article is correct in noting that menhaden are at 8% of their Maximum Spawning Potential (MSP). However, the article fails to note that, given the large number of eggs an individual menhaden lays, this has usually been sufficient to rebuild the population; MSP has rarely gone above 10% in the past 50 years. Currently, the menhaden fishery is meeting its target fecundity levels.

The article is also misleading in claiming an alleged lack of menhaden as being responsible for mycobacteriosis in sea bass. A recent survey of Chesapeake Bay marine life puts menhaden at around 9% of striped bass diet. However, bass diets are variable for reasons that have nothing to do with the commercial reduction fishery, such as water quality and location and prevalence of other prey species, as bass do not exclusively rely on one species for food. The cause of mycobacteriosis in bass is also more due to environmental factors than to the presence of menhaden. A more credible explanation is the "thermal niche/oxygen squeeze" theory. Currently, large amounts of run-off in the Bay have created areas with low levels of oxygen, called hypoxia, in cold waters that bass traditionally inhabit. Because the waters that they are most suited to are uninhabitable, bass spend more time in warmer, shallower waters. The temperature of these waters are too high for the bass to feed properly, leading to a variety of health problems, including susceptibility to mycobacteriosis.

 

 

Boston, MA – October 3, 2011 – Conservation Law Foundation issued the following statement and set of recommendations in connection with today’s U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing on the first year of implementation of Amendment 16 to the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery Management Plan.

Amendment 16, which has been in effect since May 2010, was the result of a three-year public process and was overwhelmingly approved by the New England Fishery Management Council. While some predicted dire revenue losses under the new sector system implemented by Amendment 16, the National Marine Fisheries Service recently reported that all-species gross revenues for the groundfish fleet in the 2010 fishing year–$297.7 million–were $26.6 million more than gross revenues in the 2009 fishing year. Groundfish permit sales, an important indicator of consolidation at an organization level, were extremely low.

“These outcomes show a healthy, adaptive fleet that has diversified to target multiple species beyond groundfish, and that has begun to take advantage of the added flexibility that the sector system in New England provides even in the challenging start-up year,” said Peter Shelley, CLF Senior Counsel. “Amendment 16 is an important step in the right direction for New England and New England’s fishermen. It should be supported in Washington, D.C., and efforts to improve the system should be spearheaded in New England as intended by Congress.”

CLF also issued a set of recommendations for constructive steps forward that will improve the outcomes of Amendment 16 and the sector management system. These recommendations include:

The New England Fishery Management Council should place Amendment 18 high on its list of priority actions for the coming year. Amendment 18 has been specifically designed to look at a range of social and economic and operational aspects of Amendment 16, including its consolidation and distributional effects.
Congress should provide targeted research and development funding for gear improvements and sector technology that will allow fishermen to catch higher percentages of healthy fish populations without negatively affecting rebuilding programs of overfished stocks.
Congress should provide increased funding for data collection (fisheries-dependent and independent data) and analysis that could increase the accuracy of stock assessments and give New England fishermen the benefit of higher annual catch limits associated with rebuilding stocks on a more timely basis.
Congress should continue to support and fund permit banks, revolving loan funds, and other innovative social programs—including limits on such programs—as those programs are being developed in the region at a local or state level.