Saving Seafood

50 NGOs critique MSC over bycatch

January 26, 2017 — A group of 50 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has sent a letter to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) expressing their concerns about its certification of fisheries with high levels of bycatch.

The letter was authored by Kate O’Connell of the Animal Welfare Institute and Friederike Kreme-Obrock of Sharkproject Germany and signed by the heads of 50 nonprofits dedicated to environmental conservation, including dozens of groups dedicated to the protection and preservation of sharks, whales and dolphins.

“Many of our organizations have commented on fishery assessments under the MSC process, and over the years we have noted an apparent, and deeply worrying, lack of concern regarding the potential impacts on these species, as well as certain target species,” the letter said. “It is our view that many of the fisheries that have been assessed via the MSC certification process have not been subject to an adequate review of information available on bycatch of non-target species.”

The letter accuses the MSC of being subjective in interpreting evidence and in estimating the effects of a fishery’s impact on non-targeted species. It cites the absence of in-depth stock assessments for some species of bycatch as a problem under MSC Principle 2, which aims to maintain population levels of all species affected by a fishery at biological based limits.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Marine mammal expert: Underwater port noise is a legitimate concern

September 26th, 2016 — The Port of Gulfport will spend thousands of dollars on a “bubble curtain” device, designed to dampen sound waves from a pile-driving project.

National Marine Fisheries Service requires mitigation because the underwater sounds could be harmful to fish or dolphins.

The federal requirement came as quite a surprise to several of the port commissioners, but the impact of underwater noise is a significant issue for marine scientists.

Construction sounds from the port not only resonate along the nearby Coast, they sometimes travel underwater into the adjoining Mississippi Sound.

“We have one of the largest dolphin populations in the United States that inhabits the Mississippi Sound. Plus, it’s also a nursing ground for these animals,” said Institute for Marine Mammal Studies director, Dr. Moby Solangi.

Dolphins rely on sound and echoes for their survival.

“They locate their fish through sound, they locate their mates through sound, they find their habitat through sound. If they become deaf, they’re unable to survive,” Solangi said.

Read the read full story at WTVM

How Foreign Crews Are Able To Work Aboard US Fishing Boats

September 22, 2016 — Foreign crew members reportedly working in slave-like conditions for monthly wages as low as $350 would not have found their way onto Hawaii’s longline fishing boats without an exemption carved into the law almost 30 years ago, according to longtime industry leaders, federal officials and government records.

Today, almost all the vessels in the longline fleet have entirely foreign crews.

It wasn’t always that way.

As the Cold War was coming to an end in the late 1980s, there was a push to “Americanize” the country’s fishing fleets by instituting requirements similar to those imposed under the Jones Act on vessels engaged in coastwise trade — namely, that U.S.-flagged ships be built in the U.S. and crewed by U.S. citizens.

Congress passed a bipartisan bill to that effect, and President Ronald Reagan signed it in 1988 as the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Anti-Reflagging Act.

But the legislation exempted commercial fishermen fishing for highly migratory species, such as tuna and swordfish, from the law’s requirement that U.S. citizens comprise at least 75 percent of each crew.

At about the same time, the longline industry — then comprised of just a few dozen vessels — and more established purse seiners were leaving the West Coast to set up shop in Hawaii and Pacific Island territories. 

They left because of depleted stocks and, in the case of purse seiners, pressure to stop killing so many dolphins. 

The purse seiners were setting their huge nets, up to 500 yards deep, around schools of tuna near pods of dolphins. It created a national controversy that led to new restrictions and “dolphin-safe” tuna.

The longline boats, which catch fish by extending miles of line with thousands of hooks, initially remained strictly crewed by U.S. citizens. This changed as the fleet grew and it became harder to find local residents willing to work on the boats. Fuel prices also soared after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, adding to operational costs.

This spurred the longliners to take advantage of the foreign-crew exemption that had been pushed by members of Congress from the West Coast who were looking after the purse seiners’ interests, said Jim Cook, who co-owns several longline fishing vessels, a marine supply store and fish restaurant at Pier 38 in Honolulu. 

“It slowly infiltrated our fleet,” he said.

The longline industry now includes roughly 140 vessels, nearly all of which are ported in Honolulu, and most have entirely foreign crews, according to industry leaders and federal officials.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Study finds ship noise disrupting humpback whale feeding

August 12, 2016 — One of the biggest threats to humpback whales spending their summers in New England is being hit by a passing ship.

But a collision isn’t all they have to fear. A study published Wednesday found that low-frequency noise from passing freighters and cargo ships near the coast could be disrupting their ability to feed.

A team of researchers examining the foraging behavior of 10 whales in the Gulf of Maine found that some of these 40-ton cetaceans descended more slowly in the presence of ships, giving them less time to find the food they’d normally consume. The whales also conducted fewer side-roll maneuvers — a technique they use to feed on a type of fish known as a sand lance that’s found just above the sea floor.

“Overall, I was kind of surprised that we were able to detect any response statistically just because these humpback whales are very adaptable,” said Hannah Blair, a graduate student at Stony Brook University in New York who led the analysis on the data.

Whales, dolphins and other marine life depend heavily on sound to communicate with one another and to search for food. A growing body of evidence in recent decades suggests noise caused by humans, including ship noise, is wreaking havoc on marine life. It masks sounds produced by prey and alters the behavior of prey.

Findings like these prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in July to announce a project to address noise that impacts aquatic species and their habitat over the next 10 years. The goals include educating the public about the problem and “minimizing the acute, chronic and cumulative effects of noise on marine species and their habitat.”

The study offers the first evidence that noise could be harming the feeding behavior of humpback whales.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Times

Dolphins more common in Potomac than previously thought

July 19, 2016 — A waterfront house on Virginia’s Northern Neck promised to be a getaway for Janet Mann from three decades of studying dolphins, primarily in Australia’s Shark Bay.

But the day after Mann and her husband closed on the place in Ophelia, VA, four years ago, she spied an all-too-familiar sight from the shore where the Potomac River joins the Chesapeake Bay.

“I said, ‘Oh, look, dolphins!’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, no,’” Mann recalled. “I think we’ve given up on getting me away from my work.”

A professor of biology and psychology at Georgetown University in the District of Columbia, Mann has since embraced the Potomac as the next frontier for her research. In fact, she’s turned that riverfront retreat into a field station for observing a surprising number of bottlenose dolphins that venture up the Bay’s second largest tributary every summer.

Though dolphins have been spotted occasionally in the Potomac for at least the last six years, Mann said she hasn’t met anyone outside of those who live near her summer house who realize how many of the marine mammals are visiting on a regular basis. Last year, she and her research team of students and other Georgetown faculty tallied nearly 200 different animals in just a two-week span.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

GLOUCESTER TIMES: Obama should hold firm on Cashes Ledge decision

July 12, 2016 — The Obama administration must hold firm to its decision earlier this year to reject so-called monument status for the vast swath of ocean around Cashes Ledge despite last-minute arm twisting from powerful environmental lobbying groups.

Earlier this spring, the administration passed on a proposal that he decree a large portion of the Gulf of Maine, including Cashes Ledge, a permanent “maritime national monument.” The edict, made through the federal Antiquities Act, would have come with little or no input from the citizenry at large or groups whose livelihoods are tied to the ocean, like the Northeast fishing industry.

Cashes Ledge, about 80 miles off the coast of Cape Ann, serves as a habitat for sharks, dolphins and sea turtles as well as migrating right whales. The area — more than 520 square miles is already off limits to fishing. There are no efforts on the part of the industry to change that.

“We’re not all nut cases here,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of the fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood. “It’s pretty much every non-environmentally subsidized fishery organization that is opposed to the use of the Antiquities Act to create marine monuments. The Magnuson-Stevens process works. It could be better, but it’s working.”

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Times

NOAA Fisheries Seeks Public Comment on Proposed Actions to Implement a Commercial Trip Limit for Dolphin in the Atlantic

July 1, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA Fisheries is seeking public comment on the proposed rule implementing Regulatory Amendment 1 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Dolphin and Wahoo Fishery of the Atlantic (Regulatory Amendment 1). The proposed rule for Regulatory Amendment 1 published in the Federal Register on June 30, 2016 (81 FR 42625). The comment period ends on August 1, 2016.

Regulatory Amendment 1 would establish a commercial trip limit for dolphin of 4,000 pounds whole weight after 75 percent of the commercial sector annual catch limit has been reached. The trip limit applies to dolphin caught commercially from Maine through the east coast of Florida. The trip limit would remain in place until the end of the fishing year or until the entire commercial annual catch limit is met, whichever comes first. The purpose of the trip limit is to reduce the chance of an in-season closure of the dolphin commercial sector as a result of the annual catch limit being reached during the fishing year and to reduce the severity of social and economic impacts caused by these closures.

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council has submitted Regulatory Amendment 1 to NOAA Fisheries for review and implementation. All comments specifically directed toward the proposed rule will be addressed in the final rule.

For more information on Regulatory Amendment 1, please visit the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Office Website at:

http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/sustainable_fisheries/s_atl/dw/2016/reg_am1/index.html.

Woods Hole Researchers ‘Listen’ to the Ocean Floor

May 23, 2016 — WOODS HOLE, Mass. — Listening to the noise of the deep sea.

That’s the intent as researchers with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, recently placed a handful of recording devices along the ocean floor from George’s Bank to New Jersey to listen to the sounds of whales, dolphins and other marine life.

It’s part of a national effort to establish a network to monitor long term changes in ocean noise.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com