Lobster and crab fishing ban in Cape Cod for 3 months to protect whales

[foxfai]

Lobster and crab fishing banned in Massachusetts Bay for 3 months to protect endangered whales

February 01, 2023

• Michael P. Norton, State House News Service

A North Atlantic right whale appears at the surface on March 28, 2018, off the coast of Plymouth, Massachusetts. (Michael Dwyer/AP)

Citing threats to the endangered North Atlantic right whale, federal officials are invoking an emergency rule to ban lobster and crab fishermen from working in a vast area of Massachusetts Bay over the next three months.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday said the emergency rule, which was also deployed in 2022, means that trap and pot fishermen fishing federal waters in an area known as the Massachusetts Restricted Area Wedge must remove all their trap and pot gear, and may not reset trawls or set new trawls, from Feb. 1 to April 30.

NOAA said "fishing in that area "poses a particularly high risk of mortality or serious injury from entanglement in fishing gear" and that there is a "high likelihood of endangered right whales swimming in the area and in waters nearby.

The risk exists, officials said, when right whales are exiting Cape Cod Bay at the same time and place where fishermen are either fishing or staging their gear in preparation for the May 1 opening of federal waters in the Massachusetts Restricted Area.

NOAA said it was implementing the rule at the request of the state of Massachusetts.

The North Atlantic right whale has been in decline since 2010, according to NOAA, with the most recent published estimate of the population size in 2019 at 368 whales. That year, there were reportedly more males than females.

Data from 2020 and 2021 "suggest the decline has continued and that fewer than 350 individuals remain." NOAA attributed the decline to "high levels of human-caused mortality caused by entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes in both the U.S. and Canada."

[codfish]

1 hour ago, foxfai said:

Lobster and crab fishing banned in Massachusetts Bay for 3 months to protect endangered whales

February 01, 2023

• Michael P. Norton, State House News Service

A North Atlantic right whale appears at the surface on March 28, 2018, off the coast of Plymouth, Massachusetts. (Michael Dwyer/AP)

Citing threats to the endangered North Atlantic right whale, federal officials are invoking an emergency rule to ban lobster and crab fishermen from working in a vast area of Massachusetts Bay over the next three months.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday said the emergency rule, which was also deployed in 2022, means that trap and pot fishermen fishing federal waters in an area known as the Massachusetts Restricted Area Wedge must remove all their trap and pot gear, and may not reset trawls or set new trawls, from Feb. 1 to April 30.

NOAA said "fishing in that area "poses a particularly high risk of mortality or serious injury from entanglement in fishing gear" and that there is a "high likelihood of endangered right whales swimming in the area and in waters nearby.

The risk exists, officials said, when right whales are exiting Cape Cod Bay at the same time and place where fishermen are either fishing or staging their gear in preparation for the May 1 opening of federal waters in the Massachusetts Restricted Area.

NOAA said it was implementing the rule at the request of the state of Massachusetts.

The North Atlantic right whale has been in decline since 2010, according to NOAA, with the most recent published estimate of the population size in 2019 at 368 whales. That year, there were reportedly more males than females.

Data from 2020 and 2021 "suggest the decline has continued and that fewer than 350 individuals remain." NOAA attributed the decline to "high levels of human-caused mortality caused by entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes in both the U.S. and Canada."

Thanks for the info more time to work on my gear for 2023

[mikez2]

Whales are big in the national and international news right now. 

Expect to hear alot more about them in the next few months. They are being turned into a political hot potato that will figure prominently in the presidential election coming up.

 

Stay tuned to hear from environmental watchdog groups in three, two, one....

[bob_G]

2 hours ago, mikez2 said:

Whales are big in the national and international news right now. 

Expect to hear alot more about them in the next few months. They are being turned into a political hot potato that will figure prominently in the presidential election coming up.

 

Stay tuned to hear from environmental watchdog groups in three, two, one....

Please don't politicize this.

Whales, esp right the whale are on the verge of extinction. Less than 350 remain.  Up and down the coast right whales and their calves are dragging fishing gear behind them, and cannot be freed of it.  An emaciated whale is presently swimming with a broken back as a result of a ship strike.

These creatures need all the help we can give them or otherwise we'll lose them.

[codfish]

21 mins ago, bob_G said:

Please don't politicize this.

Whales, esp right the whale are on the verge of extinction. Less than 350 remain.  Up and down the coast right whales and their calves are dragging fishing gear behind them, and cannot be freed of it.  An emaciated whale is presently swimming with a broken back as a result of a ship strike.

These creatures need all the help we can give them or otherwise we'll lose them.

thanks for sharing I think we can all agree "Sitting with the whales never gets old"

[mikez2]

I'm sympathetic to the men and women in the lobster and crab fishery who are impacted by these regs.

Nevertheless, the number of these boat strikes and entanglements are well documented. 

They just tried cutting some rope from one a couple weeks ago. They didn't get all the rope.

 

Damn. It was supposed to be a photo. You can click it to see.

 

PHOTO: CMARI W/ NOAA PERMIT #24359

 

A rescue team works to remove hundreds of feet of fishing rope from Nimbus, a fifteen-year-old North Atlantic right whale, off the coast of Jekyll Island, Georgia, on January 20, 2023.

CMARI_0295_20JAN2023_3812.webp

Edited February 1 by mikez2

[foxfai]

2 hours ago, bob_G said:

Please don't politicize this.

Whales, esp right the whale are on the verge of extinction. Less than 350 remain.  Up and down the coast right whales and their calves are dragging fishing gear behind them, and cannot be freed of it.  An emaciated whale is presently swimming with a broken back as a result of a ship strike.

These creatures need all the help we can give them or otherwise we'll lose them.

I am very sad that they kept dying (saw them in the news) within these few months. 

[mikez2]

9 mins ago, foxfai said:

I am very sad that they kept dying (saw them in the news) within these few months. 

The rope entanglements have been in the news on and off for several years. There's one in particular, Snowcone, who is a celebrity. I'm not sure if she's still alive. They've been predicting her death for months.

I guess it's pretty hard to get them untangled. I even heard a rescuer was killed attempting to free one. Don't know if that is true.

[Highlander1]

2 hours ago, bob_G said:

Please don't politicize this.

Whales, esp right the whale are on the verge of extinction. Less than 350 remain.  Up and down the coast right whales and their calves are dragging fishing gear behind them, and cannot be freed of it.  An emaciated whale is presently swimming with a broken back as a result of a ship strike.

These creatures need all the help we can give them or otherwise we'll lose them.

And this from a feller that made his living lobstering? So, seems like 350 isn't a number that they can ever recover from. This past media blitz on the whales and the boats doesn't indicate if current practices have been ongoing for many years as they probably have so extinction seems a real probability. I don't see this species recovering because they take lobster boats out of the equation, theres many vessels out there that can kill them too, not just lobster boats. Guys and gals deserve to be able to make a living, all you can do for the whales now is hope, life changes in front of our eyes, here today, gone tomorrow, forever. 

 

I hate to see extinction but what are the choices?    

[mikez2]

1 min ago, Highlander1 said:

And this from a feller that made his living lobstering? So, seems like 350 isn't a number that they can ever recover from. This past media blitz on the whales and the boats doesn't indicate if current practices have been ongoing for many years as they probably have so extinction seems a real probability. I don't see this species recovering because they take lobster boats out of the equation, theres many vessels out there that can kill them too, not just lobster boats. Guys and gals deserve to be able to make a living, all you can do for the whales now is hope, life changes in front of our eyes, here today, gone tomorrow, forever. 

 

I hate to see extinction but what are the choices?    

In terms of the current media blitz, there are two separate issues. 

The first is the lobster gear entanglements with the endangered right whales. That one has been going on for years but the media blitz began last year or the year before when the feds proposed strict regs regarding lobster and crab gear. The lobster industry fought it, got it temporarily blocked, then ultimately lost just recently. 

 

The second aspect is more recent and pertains to a large increase in whale strandings and deaths along the east coast, particularly NJ and NY. These are mostly humpback whales but others including sper m whales and even an orca. 

 

The causes of those deaths are being highly disputed and the argument is playing out in the media. The issue is that the anti-wind contingent is convinced activities in support of future wind farms killed the whales.

 

So down in Jersey they're claiming wind power killed the whale. Meanwhile, up in Maine the embattled lobster industry hears what's going on in NJ and latched on to the wind theory to cry foul. Why should they be regulated while wind kills whales?

 

All of that would just be background noise but for the interested parties in the energy production field and in the political field.

 

Oil says, "see? Wind is bad. It kills whales".

 

And those whose political stance is against a Green agenda are saying "see? That guy with the green agenda is killing whales".

 

Super complicated. Who knows what's true. That explains why we're all seeing so many stories in the press right now.

 

I'm not trying to make it political. I'm just trying to fill in all the details that explains the media blitz.

 

The endangered right whales have been getting entangled forever. That's not new. You just never used to hear about it.

 

[Intrepid95]

4 hours ago, Highlander1 said:

So, seems like 350 isn't a number that they can ever recover from.

 

I hate to see extinction but what are the choices?    

 

They have before. From around the same in the early 00's to a peak of over 500 around 2013.

 

I dunno why the population has plummeted again since then but clearly something has changed.

 

I'm gonna be honest, when I first opened this thread earlier today I full on rolled my eyes and thought to myself, "this is ridiculous." Then I did some reading and realized that there have been no less than three right whale entanglements in the last month alone. So yeah, maybe that is contributing to their mortality rate far more than we've previously acknowledged, and also maybe it's not such a horrible idea to close some of these areas off to fixed gear fishing for a few months to give the whales a bit of a break. As a former commercial fisherman myself, I do get why that is a very unpalatable option, and absolutely folks deserve to be able to make a living. But just like any line of work, sometimes **** happens and we have to deal with it and make the necessary adjustments accordingly. That's just life.

[codfish]

5 hours ago, Intrepid95 said:

 

They have before. From around the same in the early 00's to a peak of over 500 around 2013.

 

I dunno why the population has plummeted again since then but clearly something has changed.

 

I'm gonna be honest, when I first opened this thread earlier today I full on rolled my eyes and thought to myself, "this is ridiculous." Then I did some reading and realized that there have been no less than three right whale entanglements in the last month alone. So yeah, maybe that is contributing to their mortality rate far more than we've previously acknowledged, and also maybe it's not such a horrible idea to close some of these areas off to fixed gear fishing for a few months to give the whales a bit of a break. As a former commercial fisherman myself, I do get why that is a very unpalatable option, and absolutely folks deserve to be able to make a living. But just like any line of work, sometimes **** happens and we have to deal with it and make the necessary adjustments accordingly. That's just life.

[bob_G]

12 hours ago, mikez2 said:

 

 

Super complicated. Who knows what's true. That explains why we're all seeing so many stories in the press right now.

 

I'm not trying to make it political. I'm just trying to fill in all the details that explains the media blitz.

 

The endangered right whales have been getting entangled forever. That's not new. You just never used to hear about it.

 

There's nothing complicated about it.

Whales are majestic animals.  But unfortunately, they're also dumb animals. We're invading their domain. We can't allow breeding females and their calves to swim around our waters, suffering, because they're dragging around a 1/4 mile of 3/4" chafing gear behind them.

 

We're humans. We're smart ( at least some are).  We can prevent,  if not solve it. We owe it to them. This represents a temporary inconvenience, but the lobstermen will survive.

Edited February 2 by bob_G

[Jeff270]

At what point are we obligated to adjust our habits when we realize those practices are having detrimental effects on the environment?

  

Its no longer acceptable for manufacturing sites to bury toxic waste on site.   You can't throw waste products in rivers anymore.   We have hunting seasons and bag limits for waterfowl.  

 

Manufacturing has changed, mining has changed, farming has changed, logging has changed, all in the interest of helping to preserve natural resources.  We preserve land in order to keep it from being developed in order to provide green space.

 

So why are we so against changing fishing practices in order to help the environment?   

 

 

[foxfai]

6 mins ago, Jeff270 said:

So why are we so against changing fishing practices in order to help the environment?   

 

 

I am not. But some are because it's effecting them earning their money.