Conservation & Environment

(NEW BEDFORD, MA) – Robert C. Rocha, Jr., Science Programs Manager of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, has been named to NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Committee as Education Alternate Member. "It's an honor to be chosen to play a part in managing this critical natural resource with such a diverse group of people and user groups. I'm sure that the meetings will never be dull," Mr. Rocha said.

Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary Advisory Council was established in March 2001 to assure continuous public participation in the management of the sanctuary. The volunteer council's 17 voting members and six ex-officio members represent a variety of local user groups, the general public, and state and federal governmental jurisdictions.

Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary encompasses 842 square miles of ocean, stretching between Cape Ann and Cape Cod. The sanctuary supports a diversity of marine life including 22 species of marine mammals, more than 30 species of seabirds, more than 60 species of fishes and hundreds of marine invertebrates and plants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new fishery plan proposes limits for dozens of additional south Atlantic species, including some popular catches. Public hearings are set during the next two weeks in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

For the public hearing schedule and a fact sheet that explains this new plan, click here.
 
A statement from the Pew Environment Group about the plan is below.
 
CONTACT: Debbie Salamone, 407-982-0958, dsalamone@pewtrusts.org
 
NEW FISHING LIMITS PROPOSED FOR DOZENS OF SOUTHEAST SPECIES
Pew supports proactive approach to prevent overfishing
 
ORLANDO, Fla. (Jan. 19, 2011) —Holly Binns, a project manager for the Pew Environment Group, issued the following statement today in advance of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s public hearings during the next two weeks on a new plan to set fishing limits on dozens of species. The plan is a prescription to prevent overfishing by setting limits now—before species suffer population declines.
 
“This proactive plan by the council will help prevent overfishing and avoid steeper restrictions in the future. It is like visiting the doctor for preventive care rather than waiting until things get so bad you end up in the emergency room.
 
“The idea is to avoid what happened with red snapper, which is in such severe trouble that a total fishing moratorium was needed in 2010 to save the species. Such a drastic measure might not have been necessary if the red snapper problem had been addressed more proactively, as this new comprehensive plan calls for.
 
“This strategy to avert overfishing is also essential to help deal with the consequences of the red snapper fishing moratorium and additional protections approved in 2010 for about a dozen other species, such as red and gag grouper. Without those species to target year-round, anglers are likely to shift their focus to the fish covered by this comprehensive plan, which could lead to unhealthy population declines.
 
“This is a plan that takes a big-picture look at fish and fishing, helps avoid problems in the future and sets the course for restoring a healthy, balanced ocean ecosystem.”
 
For more details about the plan, please see our tip sheet here.

The Pew Environment Group is the conservation arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts, a non-governmental organization that applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improve public policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life.

 

 

 

 

There is no overarching international agreement to limit overfishing globally, but a few governments have been able to implement and enforce restrictions at regional levels that have resulted in rebounding fish stocks. The success of these isolated examples gives environmentalists and marine biologists hope that protecting marine hotspots from overfishing can save the biodiversity of the world's oceans.

The results of an extensive four-year study released in 2006 by leading fisheries expert Boris Worm of Canada's Dalhousie University and colleagues showed that overfishing would put every single commercial fishery in the world out of business by 2048, with the oceans potentially never recovering.

But University of Washington fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn challenged Worm's frightening conclusion, offering evidence that several fisheries in parts of the U.S., Iceland and New Zealand were recovering. So, the two men decided to team up on a new, even more comprehensive survey of fisheries around the world.

The results the second time around — published in 2010 in the peer-reviewed journal, Science — provided ocean advocates with somewhat more encouraging results. In half of the 10 fisheries studied by Worm, Hilborn and their researchers, closing some fisheries, creating protected areas, setting catch limits and modernizing equipment did result in lower exploitation rates and some fish are indeed on the rebound.

"This is a watershed," Worm told reporters. The new study "shows clearly what can be done not only to avoid further fisheries collapse but to actually rebuild fish stocks" and provides a baseline that scientists and managers can use to gauge progress. "It's only a start, but it gives me hope that we have the ability to bring overfishing under control," he added.

Read the complete story from The AZ Daily Sun.

 

 

 

 

 

The Marine Fish Conservation Network announces a search for its next Executive Director. For a description of the position and how to apply (by February 15), please click here. The Marine Fish Conservation Network is seeking to hire its next Executive Director, working out of its Washington, DC office. MFCN is a national coalition of almost 200 national, regional and local environmental organizations, recreational and commercial fishing groups, aquariums, and marine science groups dedicated to marine fish conservation and to sustainable fish populations, ecosystems, and fishing communities. To learn more about the Network, please visit our website: www.conservefish.org.

An expansion of wind energy is well worth pursuing off the coast of Massachusetts.

But that expansion should not come at the expense of the fishing industry, and it appears that the latest wind energy initiative by the Obama administration once again puts commercial fishing — along with the jobs it creates and preserves and the food it provides for this region and beyond — at the bottom of its priority totem poll.

Those in the industry and their representatives at the Statehouse and in Congress who profess to be advocates for fishermen should intervene now to make sure an already endangered industry does not remain at the bottom of that priority list.

For this initiative comes in the form of the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement already asking wind energy companies to notify it of any interest they have in leasing portions of a massive, 2,200-nautical-square-mile sector of the ocean, south of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

That area contains some of the richest fishing grounds off the coast of Massachusetts.

According to David Goethel, a commercial fisherman and member of the New England Fishery Management Council's Habitat Committee, "a half billion dollars worth of seafood comes out of this area."

Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bluefin tuna is one of the most majestic and prized creatures in the sea. Last week, one caught off Japan sold in Tokyo for $396,000, to be used as sushi.

Now the fish is the subject of a scientific fight that shows how hard it will be to gauge the environmental fallout of the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

The U.S. government will wrap up public meetings next week on whether to recommend declaring the Atlantic bluefin an endangered species. If the government declared the fish endangered, it would bar fishermen from targeting the fish in U.S. waters. An environmental group filed the request last year, claiming in part that the western-Atlantic stock of the fish, long believed to spawn only in the Gulf of Mexico, would "be devastated" by last year's spill from a blown-out BP PLC well.

But scientists disagree about what portion of last spring's crop of young tuna, or larvae, were hit by oil. They disagree about whether the Gulf is the only place where the western-Atlantic bluefin spawns. In short, they disagree about virtually every aspect of the spill's effect on the fish.

Read the complete story from The Wall Street Journal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Obama administration has asked wind energy companies for notices of interest in leasing blocks in a 2,200-nautical-square-mile sector of rich fishing waters south of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, a move that further threatens New England's fishing fleet.

The area of interest was determined in consultation with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

The bureau is the successor to the Mineral Management Service that drew extensive fire for lax regulation of oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico after BP's Deepwater Horizon well imploded last April.

The Habitat Committee of the New England Fishery Management Council was briefed on the project for the first time last Thursday by Chris Boelke, a habitat resources specialist assigned to the Gloucester regional office of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Critics of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas often say that the acronym ICCAT might better stand for the “International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna.” At its most recent meeting, ICCAT lived up to that derisive nickname by setting 2011 catch levels for Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) at basically the same levels as 2010 — 12,900 tons, down from 13,500 – despite the pleas of conservation scientists and the bluefin's place on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "Red List" of endangered or critically endangered species (Western stock and Eastern stock).

Soon after the ICCAT decision – or “death sentence”, as a post at Change.org put it – the Center for Biological Diversity announced a "bluefin boycott."

While that sounds (and is) good, the Center’s campaign is about far more than simply giving up buying and eating bluefin tuna. After all, Japan consumes about 80% of the world's bluefin catch, so the impact of a U.S. boycott will be limited. That's one reason the Center's "boycott" also calls for action by governments and international organizations. (Read more about the limits of consumer-based campaigns in my earlier Ethicurean piece.)

Read the complete story from The Ethicurean.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every year, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) publishes an annual State of the Bay report, which grades the health of the bay on a variety of ecological factors while raising awareness of its most pressing issues. The recently released 2010 report, however, features a short section on Atlantic menhaden that includes vague and misleading language, which many scientists feel necessitates clarification. Menhaden management is the subject of this week’s (Jan 11-13,2011) meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Atlantic menhaden technical committee.

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — Jan. 10, 2011 — The larger a population, the better chance it stands to produce future generations, according to conventional wisdom. But that wisdom is inapplicable when it comes to the anomaly that is Atlantic menhaden, a small, oily fish more likely to be found in a medicine cabinet than on a menu.

Used to make fish oil and fishmeal, menhaden boast the evolutionary edge that enables females to produce enormous numbers of eggs. The success of those eggs, scientists say, is far more dependent on environmental conditions — weather, water quality and atmospheric pressure – than on anything else, including restrictions on commercial fishing

“Intuitively, it makes sense that less fishing means more menhaden,” says National Marine Fisheries Services biologist Joseph Smith. “But it doesn’t work that way. Based on years of data, there doesn’t seem to be a very good relationship between the number of spawners and the number of juveniles.”

Nonetheless, the CBF’s 2010 State of the Bay Report offers the conclusive and unsubstantiated claim that “the fishery must be managed conservatively so that large numbers are left in the water to benefit both the Bay and mankind.”

At issue here is how the ASMFC will conduct its stock assessment and determine appropriate approaches to manage the fishery. The CBF would like to see more conservative management, and, for the last several years, has been pushing the ASMFC to adopt a broader ecosystem approach.

Presenting a case for more conservative management, the CBF’s report states:

For many years, fisheries scientists, including those at CBF, increasingly have been concerned about declining numbers of menhaden and the impact the commercial fishery has on the menhaden population. Consequently, the [ASMFC] capped the Bay’s menhaden harvest at 109,020 tons in 2006 and extended the cap again in 2009, pending further study. A 2010 ASMFC analysis concluded that the population of Atlantic menhaden has fallen to historically low levels, having been overfished routinely for decades.

In fact, the 2010 assessment uses data only through 2008, with data from this last year showing that fishing mortality level barely above the overfishing limit. For menhaden, assessments consider two major factors: fishing mortality, which is the ratio of fish harvested to the total estimated population size; and biomass, which, in this case, is expressed as the number of mature eggs produced by the population.  As reference points, fisheries assessments use targets (to represent the ideal level) and limits (to represent levels not to exceed). Scientist found the fishing mortality estimate for 2008 was barely over the limit (by 0.4 %), meaning that slight overfishing occurred in 2008.  On the other hand, the biomass/egg reference point was right on target, suggesting that plenty of eggs were produced.  Also, in the nine years prior (1999 – 2007), scientists concluded that overfishing did not occur at all. The CBF’s claim that menhaden have been “overfished routinely for decades” is a gross misstatement.  

If there is justification to readdress management approaches to the fishery, it will not be based on the legitimacy of CBF claims. Its 2010 State of the Bay report includes other statements on menhaden that, although quoted in at least one news source, several fisheries experts repudiate on grounds that they are misleading or are simply too vague.

For instance, the report says that “Atlantic menhaden are among the most important creatures in the Chesapeake Bay,” and are “prodigious ‘filter feeders,’ swimming in large schools with mouths agape to consume plankton … thereby helping to maintain a balance of microscopic life in Bay waters.”

But Robert J. Latour, who head the ASMFC’s menhaden technical committee and conducts research at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science says, “recent scientific evaluations of the ecological role of menhaden have indicated that these fish may not be as important for improving water quality as originally thought, but a thorough assessment of their role has not be conducted and CBF did not comment on the level of importance. The report does state that menhaden help to ‘maintain a balance of microscopic life in Bay waters.’ This statement is not necessarily misleading, but it is somewhat uninformative since it is unclear what is meant by ‘balance’. Plankton communities are continuously in flux throughout Chesapeake Bay, and the mechanisms controlling the composition and abundance within these communities are complex and not well understood.”

The CBF’s report also mentions that “Menhaden are also essential prey for many important Chesapeake Bay species, including striped bass, bluefish, weakfish, ospreys, herons, and marine mammals.”

Indeed, menhaden, like numerous other prey species, are an important part of the food chain, but their presence in the diet of other species like striped bass is not as great as some believe. Conducted by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the Chesapeake multi-species monitoring and assessment program found that menhaden represented only about 8 percent of striped bass food in the Chesapeake Bay, with a variety of other species accounting up the balance.

Finally, concluding its rationale on the ecological importance of the fish, the report invokes author H. Bruce Franklin’s claim that menhaden are “the most important fish in the sea” – a curious assertion from an English professor with expertise in science fiction.

This week (Jan 11-13, 2001), the Atlantic menhaden technical committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will meet to examine alternate approaches to setting reference points in preparation for the next fishery assessment, slated to begin in early 2012. Clearly, the CBF is of its own mind already. The section on menhaden in its 2010 State of the Bay report concludes that, “Further action by ASMFC to establish more sustainable harvest limits is expected. Because of menhaden’s critical ecological value up and down the food chain, CBF supports this likely action. The fishery must be managed conservatively so that large numbers are left in the water to benefit both the Bay and mankind.”

While CBF's conclusion sounds like common sense, it is not backed by the work and viewpoints of many leading scientists in the field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCIV) — Something fishy is happening on Folly Beach. About 10,000 bait fish washed up on shore. Crews hired by the city cleaned them up Friday. The Department of Natural Resources say it was the cold weather that caused the deaths.

Crews with B&C Utility raked up the thousands of dead fish, 6 inch Menhaden that were lining the shore on Folly.

"We've got a whole of work today," said worker Anthony Deas. 

The Department of Natural Resources has an explanation. Biologists with the agency say the fish may have gotten stuck behind a sand bar in shallow water where the water was colder. The sea temperature was about 48 degrees.

 But with all the dead fish and birds around the world like birds in Texas that dropped from the sky, some people we found on Folly are not convinced by that explanation.

"I don't know if I buy that. I think it's a sign. I think it's a sign. We should always be aware of the signs that are handed to us and this is a big one," Folly Beach resident Andrew Worland said.

Folly Beach's mayor was concerned with the lingering affects of the dead bait like the smell.

"At least it's not hot and humid," Mayor Tim Goodwin said.

It is about a $5-6,000 bill for fish and it will end up at the landfill.

Read the complete story from WCIV-TV News.