Saving Seafood

Feds look at expanding habitat for world’s most endangered whales

July 13, 2022 — North Pacific right whales, the most endangered whales in the world, could gain an expanded protected habitat from Alaska to Baja California, if the feds approve after a one-year review now underway.

On Monday, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries announced the review, a response to a petition filed this past March by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity and conservation group Save the North Pacific Right Whale — dedicated to increasing protections and awareness of the rare whale. They urged the federal government to revise the critical habitat designation for North Pacific right whales under the Endangered Species Act.

In 2008, the Fisheries Service issued a final rule designating about 1,175 square miles in the Gulf of Alaska and 35,460 square miles in the Southeast Bering Sea as critical habitat for North Pacific right whales. But the environmentalists say two key habitats are essential for this right whale population’s survival — a migratory corridor through the Fox Islands in the Aleutian chain, including Unimak Pass, and feeding grounds near Kodiak Island.

In their petition, the groups argued the government should connect the existing critical habitats by extending the Bering Sea unit boundary westward and southward to the Fox Islands, through Unimak Pass to the edge of the continental slope, and eastward to the Kodiak Island. This change would encompass a key migratory point for whales and connect their foraging grounds, the organizations said.

Alice Kaswan, professor and associate dean at University of San Francisco School of Law, said while this announcement does not mean the agency will agree with the petition’s demands, it does indicate “the door’s open” for similar petitions.

“The agency’s willingness to grant the petition shows it’s open to conducting the additional science to determine whether the additional land or ocean really should be set aside as critical habitat,” Kaswan said. “It’s an indication that this administration has a willingness to protect endangered species.”

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

NOAA broke law by not protecting right whales, judge rules

July 12, 2022 — NOAA violated federal law by not doing enough to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from entanglements caused by lobster fishing gear, a federal judge said Friday.

In his ruling, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the agency broke both the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) when it issued a biological opinion and a final rule that changed fishing gear requirements last year.

Boasberg declared both the biological opinion and the rule “invalid” and said more needs to be done to protect the whales.

The judge acknowledged that “this may seem a severe result” for both NOAA Fisheries and the lobster industry but added that “no actor here … operates free from the strict requirements imposed by the MMPA and ESA.”

NOAA declined to comment.

The ruling marked a win for the Center for Biological Diversity, the Conservation Law Foundation, and Defenders of Wildlife, groups that first sued NOAA in early 2018 over a prior biological opinion.

“The court’s decision recognizes what NOAA Fisheries has ignored for decades — that Congress clearly intended to protect right whales from the lobster gear entanglements that are driving the species toward extinction just as surely as whaling nearly did,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife.

Davenport said the opinion represented “the course correction the agency needs to put both the species and the fishery on a path towards sustainability and co-existence.”

Read the full story at E&E News

Fishing-gear entanglements of whales increased in Alaska, NOAA report says

June 30, 2022 — Alaska was the only U.S. coastal region to have an increase in the confirmed cases of large whales entangled in fishing gear in 2020, a contrast to a national trend of declining cases over the past six to eight years, according to a report issued Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Of the 53 cases of large whales entangled in fishing gear nationally in 2020, 11 occurred in Alaska, according to the report, from NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The previous year, there were 75 confirmed cases of whale entanglements nationwide, with nine of them occurring in Alaska, according to a separate report for 2019 also released Tuesday by the fisheries service.

The vast majority of confirmed Alaska whale entanglements — and the vast majority of entanglements nationally — involved humpback whales. In 2020, 10 of the Alaska cases involved live whales, and eight of those involved humpback whales. All but one of the confirmed Alaska entanglements of live large whales in 2020 occurred in waters of Southeast Alaska, according to the report.

Humpback whales are relatively plentiful among the large whale species, the report for 2020 notes. “Humpback whales are found in all the world’s oceans and several populations have rebounded in recent years, so the frequency of entanglements seen in this species could be due to many factors, such as the increasing number of whales, a high degree of overlap in distribution of whales, growing coastal communities, and fishing effort, or a combination of these or additional factors,” it said.

Read the full story at KTOO

River Traps Chew at Huge Ocean Plastics Problem

June 16, 2022 — Floating fences in India. Whimsical water- and solar-driven conveyor belts with googly eyes in Baltimore. Rechargeable aquatic drones and a bubble barrier in The Netherlands.

These are some of the sophisticated and at times low-tech inventions being deployed to capture plastic trash in rivers and streams before it can pollute the world’s oceans.

The devices are fledgling attempts to dent an estimated 8.8 million tons (8 metric tons) of plastic that gets into the ocean every year. Once there, it maims or kills marine plants and animals including whales,dolphins, and seabirds and accumulates in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other vast swirls of currents.

Trash-gobbling traps on rivers and other waterways won’t eliminate ocean plastic but can help reduce it, say officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

 

Study says whales adapting to climate change; so too must mariners and fishermen

June 15, 2022 — A review of 20 years of data tracking the highly endangered north Atlantic right whale shows the population has shifted its feeding and migration patterns significantly, as sea temperatures in the Gulf of Maine warm with climate change.

The findings show that government-enforced protections for right whales – already requiring restrictions on vessel speed limits and fishermen’s lobster and fish trap lines and buoys – will need to be adjusted as the whales shift their movements and habitats.

After two decades of warming waters in the Gulf of Maine, right whales – a population now estimated at just 336 animals at risk from ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear – are relying much more on Cape Cod Bay as their food supply has changed.

“The time of year when we are most likely to see right and humpback whales in Cape Cod Bay has changed considerably, and right whales are using the habitat much more heavily than they did 20 years ago,” said Dan Pendleton, a research scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, in a summary issued by the aquarium. Pendleton is lead author of the study and its team of whale scientists in the U.S. and Canada.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

WPFMC trying to tackle suite of issues, criticizes lack of NOAA support

April 8, 2022 — The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (WPFMC) is trying to tackle multiple problems faced in its jurisdiction, including ineffective whale bycatch solutions, U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultations, creating more-equitable fisheries, and issues regarding fishery rights in American Samoa.

The council has been working to tackle how to handle false killer whale bycatch in the region’s tuna fisheries – mainly in Hawai’i and American Samoa. In 2013, a plan to use weaker circle hooks that are 4.5 millimeters or less in diameter was created. The weaker hooks were supposed straighten and release whales caught while still remaining strong enough to hook bigeye tuna and other marketable fish species.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

MAINE: House advances bill to support lobster fishing industry

March 28, 2022 — The Maine House delivered a strong bipartisan vote Thursday to advance a measure sponsored by Rep. Holly Stover, D-Boothbay, that would provide direct relief funds to Maine’s lobster fishermen impacted by recent federal regulatory changes. The vote was 116-18.

Following the closure of approximately 1,000 square miles of federal waters off the coast of Maine, LD 1898 would establish the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Impact Fund to provide compensation for the immediate financial losses felt by lobster fishermen.

Read the full story at the Boothbay Register

 

Lawmakers eye grants to fund innovation to save right whales

February 22, 2022 — Lawmakers from Massachusetts and New Jersey want to set up a new grant program to help develop technology that assists in saving a rare species of whale from extinction.

The North Atlantic right whale numbers less than 340 and faces threats from collisions with large ships and entanglement in fishing gear. They are the subject of numerous new fishing rules designed to improve their chances of survival.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

 

Alaska fisherman’s photos could be first visual evidence of North Pacific right whales in the Bering Sea in winter

February 17, 2022 — Josh Trosvig is the captain of the Cerulean, a 58-foot boat currently fishing for cod in the Bering Sea, about 80 miles northeast of Unalaska.

On a sunny day earlier this month, while he was waiting for the tide to change, he said he spotted something that looked like a large tote bobbing on the surface of the water, about 300 feet from his boat.

It turned out to be a group of whales.

But not just any whales.

“I’ve seen a lot of whales — thousands, tens of thousands in my 35 years of fishing out here,” Trosvig said. “But this was unique. I’ve never seen whales feed like that.”

Trosvig didn’t know it at the time, but the whales he was watching were North Pacific right whales. They’re critically endangered. And scientists say Trosvig is likely the first person to take photos and video of the whales feeding in the Bering Sea in the winter.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Right whales giving birth a cause for excitement, but not enough to save endangered species

February 7, 2022 — Each of the 13 calves born so far this winter have been greeted with joy, the news shared along the whales’ migration route from the waters off New England and Canada to the calving grounds off Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

But with an estimated population at 336 and falling, there’s no escaping the math, or the impact of human activities on the world’s most endangered large whale.

An estimated 30 whales die each year, according to federal officials. Vessel traffic, commercial fishing gear and a warming climate all threaten the whales.

An average of 11 calves were born each season over the past decade. It would take four times that many over a number of years to bring the whales back to a sustainable population, said Barb Zoodsma, large whale recovery coordinator for the Southeast for the National Marine Fisheries Service. “We’ve never seen that many calves.”

Read the full story from USA Today