800 × 535

Progress made on disentangling North ...

theguardian.pe.ca

670 × 379

North Atlantic right whales entangled ...

globalnews.ca

AG Maura Healey calls for unity to protect right whales

By Mary Ann Bragg
Posted Sep 7, 2019

BOSTON — Canadian premiers and U.S. governors in the Northeast need to take active steps to protect imperiled North Atlantic right whales from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.

“Their fate is our shared responsibility,” Healey wrote in her Sept. 4 letter to the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers.

— Read more about the plight of the North Atlantic right whale

The six New England states and the five Eastern Canadian provinces meet at least annually to discuss regional issues related to energy, trade, the environment and infrastructure. The conference scheduled Sunday through Tuesday in New Brunswick was canceled due to Hurricane Dorian.

Right whales migrate along the East Coast from Florida to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, typically spending late winter and early spring months in and around Cape Cod Bay.

But Healey’s call for unity to protect right whales comes at a time when the state of Maine has now withdrawn support for an April pact among U.S. stakeholders in the Northeast to reduce the risk of lobster gear entanglement by 60%.

“No specific response,” said Jeff Nichols, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, about the Healey letter.

The state of Maine does intend to cooperate with other U.S. stakeholders who signed the April pact, Nichols said. But that will occur after state officials carefully review data and obtain more input from the state’s lobstermen, he said. The state intends to present a plan to the National Marine Fisheries Service in October, he said.

In the pact hammered out at an April meeting of the advisory Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, Massachusetts and New Hampshire representatives generally agreed to a 30% cut in the number of vertical buoy lines, as well as using ropes with a lower 1,700-pound breaking strength or outfitted with devices that separate or cut the line when under pressure. Maine proposed a 50% reduction in the number of vertical lines and the use of rope with lower breaking strength. Rhode Island is to employ a combination of 18% trap line reductions, weaker rope and trawling up to 30 traps, and the offshore fishery is working on a variation of those techniques.

The pact came after what has been a steady decline in the right whale population since 2010, along with 28 deaths in the last three years in U.S. and Canadian waters. The population is in the range of 400 animals, with about 95 breeding females remaining, according to right whale specialists in the region.

The possibility of the imposition of rules such as fishing rope restrictions and fishing area closures to protect right whales — potentially in ways the U.S. states and Canadian provinces may not want — is a risk with no cooperative, urgent action, Healey said. More lawsuits are likely as well, she said.

Currently, in a lawsuit filed April 4 in federal court, Richard Max Strahan of Durham, New Hampshire, alleges that the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and the state Division of Marine Fisheries are violating the federal Endangered Species Act by requiring licensed fishermen to use vertical buoy ropes in their fishing gear that kills and entangles endangered whales and sea turtles. Healey’s office is representing the two state agencies. The lawsuit names three other defendants.

In a notice filed Aug. 13, Strahan said he intends to add Healey as another defendant in her official and personal capacity, according to court records. “She is currently conspiring with other government employees and commercial fishermen to violate the Section 9 prohibitions of the Endangered Species Act,” Strahan said in the notice. Section 9 are prohibited acts by humans against endangered fish or wildlife such as “takes,” which means actual or attempted harm.

On Friday, Strahan filed a similar lawsuit in federal court against the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the National Marine Fisheries Service. In the suit, he is seeking to stop the agencies, both right away and permanently, “from further requiring that its licensed fishermen must use Vertical Buoy Ropes on their fishing gear.”

Healey, in her letter to the governors and premiers, emphasizes familiar points that have been made in recent months by conservationists and scientists: the prevalence of rope entanglement scars on right whales, the changing geographic patterns of where zooplankton is found in densities that attract right whales and the whales’ resulting exploration of new areas such as the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where fewer protections from crab fishing rope and ship strikes are in place.

Healey also emphasizes the history in Massachusetts of seasonal lobster fishing bans, gear restrictions, ship speed restrictions and, more recently, collaboration between state regulators, the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association and conservation groups. She specifically pitches the use of ropeless lobster pot fishing gear with GPS-based location plotting software, which she said could support the “critically important lobster and crab fisheries.”

Using “whale-safe” gear could lead to more geographic areas opening up for commercial fishing, leading to economic growth, Healey said. “This market could extend past our state and region,” she said.

Healey is seeking both a resolution from the states and provinces to protect right whales, and action based on that resolution.

Jay Lucey, the secretariat for the group of states and provinces, did not return a request for comment Friday.

As of Friday, the National Marine Fisheries Service had not yet responded to the announcement Aug. 30 by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association that five of the state’s representatives on the take reduction team had withdrawn from the pact.

At that time, the fisheries service had begun writing a draft environmental impact statement based on the pact, after holding regional public hearings in August, including on Aug. 21 at the Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School in Bourne, attended by 200 people. Finalizing the environmental impact statement would lead to a federal decision on new restrictions on lobster gear in U.S. Northeast waters. Gillnet gear and mid-Atlantic are to be considered next

Related content

Maine lobstermen back out of regional right whale pact

September 3, 2019

Two more right whale deaths confirmed

By Beth Treffeisen
Posted Jul 18, 2019

Two more right whale deaths were confirmed in eastern Canada on Friday, bringing the total amount of right whale deaths this year in Canadian waters to eight.

The Marine Animal Response Society, a charitable organization dedicated to marine animal conservation in the Canadian Maritime Provinces, posted about the deaths on Facebook Friday afternoon.

One male whale was spotted floating Thursday off the Gaspé Peninsula by an aerial survey team, the post said. The whale is being towed ashore by Fisheries and Oceans Canada for a necropsy this weekend by the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative in Quebec.

The society also confirmed the death of a whale initially reported to be floating off Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, at the end of June, the post said. At the time, there were no images and the whale could not be located.

Images from a mariner were recently provided to the organization. With the assistance of the New England Aquarium, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Grand Manan Whale & Seabird Research Station, it was confirmed to be a right whale, the post said.

The whale has not been sighted since the initial report, the post said.

Three whales also have been found entangled but swimming this year, the society said in its post.

Only about 400 North Atlantic right whales are left in the world and the deaths are outpacing births, the organization posted.

Canadian officials monitor 3 entangled North Atlantic Right whales

By Doug Fraser
Posted Jul 6, 2019

Canadian authorities are reporting that three North Atlantic Right whales have been spotted entangled in line and fishing gear in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Since 2017, 18 right whales have died in Canadian waters. Six of those deaths occurred last month.

The right whale is one of the most endangered great whales in the world with a population of around 400 and fewer than 95 breeding females.

This week, Chris Oliver, assistant administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, sent a letter to Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Transport Canada asking for a meeting as soon as possible to work together to strengthen protections immediately.

In an email alert Friday night, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada said one right whale had a rope around its peduncle, the narrowest part of the whale’s body that joins to the flukes, and appears to be dragging something heavy. This whale was initially seen on June 29, east of New Brunswick. It has been identified as whale EG#4440. It was re-sighted on July 2, still entangled.

On Thursday, two other entangled right whales were seen, one by officials in a Transport Canada plane east of the Gaspé Peninsula, Québec. It has not yet been identified, but appeared to have rope trailing from both sides of its head down its body, the DFO reported.

The third entangled right whale was also spotted on Thursday by a researcher working east of Miscou, New Brunswick, and was identified as whale EG#4423. It was trailing a line of rope from underneath its body, according to the DFO, who believed this right whale may be one that was first sighted entangled in April in US waters.

The DFO noted that all three entangled whales were sighted in areas already closed to fishing activities.

Aerial and at-sea surveillance is underway in an effort to monitor these particular whales and get a better sense of their entanglements. The DFO said the agency was in touch contact with marine mammal partner organizations to evaluate the situation. They are considering options for attaching tracking buoys to the ropes on these whales, and whether to attempt disentanglement by a trained team.

Following 12 whale deaths in 2017 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canadian officials last year implemented seasonal speed restrictions on large boats and bans on fixed-gear fishing, similar to what is already in place in Cape Cod Bay and other U.S. waters.

The Humane Society and 14 other national and international conservation groups sent a letter Wednesday to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Fisheries and Oceans Canada Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Transport Canada Minister Marc Garneau urging use of “all available statutory authorities and financial resources to respond effectively to declining right whale abundance.”

Rescuers respond to 2 entangled whales

By Mary Ann Bragg 
Posted Aug 1, 2018

PROVINCETOWN — Rescuers had their hands full Monday in two attempts to free entangled whales in U.S. and Canadian waters.

“It was an incredibly difficult entanglement,” said Center for Coastal Studies marine animal disentanglement director Scott Landry of a late-afternoon attempt to free a large, well-known female humpback in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary after she appeared to bite down on an anchor line and then panicked.

Landry and other rescuers were in the area doing research and able to go to the whale, named Cardhu, and partially free her. But he and the other rescuers remain concerned that she still needs help, he said. While Cardhu likely has left Stellwagen Bank temporarily as a response to the experience, Landry said the center is asking everyone on the water to keep an eye out for her, as she is likely to return in time.

Landry said this entanglement was rare in that others on the water on Monday witnessed it.

“Cardhu remains entangled,” Hyannis Whale Watcher Cruises wrote Monday evening on Facebook. “She remains with a twisted line in her mouth. We (the whale watching community) will all keep a lookout for her and hope she remains in our area, can be sighted, and can be freed completely from this tangle of line.”

SHOW MORE...

As of 2016, humpback whales were no longer listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, but that same year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared an unusual mortality event for the species from Maine to Florida, and humpback deaths continue to remain elevated. There are an estimated 10,400 to 10,752 humpback whales in the northern Atlantic Ocean, including U.S. waters, according to NOAA.

“Thank you again for your patience,” wrote the whale watch company, which docks in Barnstable Harbor. “It was overwhelming and heartbreaking to witness, but we are glad we saw it and could get her some immediate response. We will look for her, I promise.”

First seen off Cape Cod Bay in 1981, Cardhu was pregnant then with the first of eight known calves. “She seems to be fond of the Stellwagen Bank feeding grounds and can be seen here at any time during the season,” according to online sanctuary records.

Even farther north on Monday, an entangled North Atlantic right whale was reported 22 miles east of Grand Manan, New Brunswick, near the Bay of Fundy. At that time, vessel problems and poor weather stopped a rescue response, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada. On Tuesday, a thorough search of the area by several agencies came up empty, and the search was called off due to more bad weather. With other agencies, the Canadian government will monitor the waters by plane and boat, weather permitting, in an attempt to find the entangled right whale and assess its condition, the agency wrote in an email.

The critically endangered right whales migrate each year along the Atlantic coast, including stops in Cape Cod Bay, as they follow the movement and density of food sources such as zooplankton, according to scientists.

On July 13, another entangled right whale was spotted swimming in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, off Miscou, New Brunswick, with rope around its body and trailing behind it, but surveyors lost sight of the animal by the next day.

With new measures in place this year to limit ship strikes and fishing rope entanglements, the Canadian agency has reported no right whale deaths. After the death of 12 right whales last year in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and another five in waters near Cape Cod, scientists have spoken of a possibly dire decline in the population, which didn’t produce a single documented calf in the most recent birthing season.

As of Saturday, 25 commercial fishing areas in Canadian waters were fully or partially closed on a temporary basis because of sightings of right whales.

http://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20180801/rescuers-respond-to-2-entangled-whales

CLICK ON LINK FOR MORE!

A GRAND BARGAIN show of force – BAKER, TRUMP back WARREN pot bill – MAYORS speak out on trans discrimination ballot question

CHARLIE BAKER'S MBTA FAIL! WE'RE STILL WAITING CHARLIE! 

- "Baker says he does have a vision for the T: 'Making it work,'" by Matt Stout, Boston Globe: "Governor Charlie Baker defended the scale of his vision for the state and its transportation network on Friday and knocked calls to infuse it with more tax-created revenue, offering a likely preview of the rhetoric awaiting his reelection bid this fall. 'Big vision does not equal tax increase, OK?' Baker, a Republican, said."

- "Democratic candidate for Governor tell us what Gov. Baker is doing wrong: On The Record," by WCVB Channel 5 Boston: Jay Gonzalez got the nomination from the Democratic Party for Massachusetts governor. He tells On The Record what's wrong with Gov. Charlie Baker."

- "US Rep. Richard Neal, House Democrats call DOJ's refusal to defend Obamacare provisions 'stunning attack on the rule of law,'" by Shannon Young, MassLive.com: "U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, and other House Democrats condemned the Trump administration Friday after the Justice Department announced it would not defend key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. They further cast the administration's brief, which was filed in federal court Thursday, as an 'attack' on both the rule of law and the stability of the United States' health care system."

MASSterList: The Setti fallout | Bitcoin ransom | Face it, Springfield

MASSterList: The Setti fallout | Bitcoin ransom | Face it, Springfield

Make Way for Right Whales: State delays start of lobster season for some rather large reasons From Mary Whitfill at Wicked Local: “The dozens of right whales spotted off South Shore coasts since Sunday have delivered a major blow to the local fishing fleet. The unusually large number of right whales feeding close to the shores of Marshfield and Hull and in Cape Cod Bay this week has led the state Division of Marine Fisheries to implement two emergency regulations – pushing off the start of lobster season in southern Massachusetts.” Wicked Local State failed to pay taxes on state trooper car perks dating back to the ‘70s Another day, another State Police accounting revelation. From Kay Lazar at the Globe: “The state has failed to pay taxes on tens of millions of dollars doled out to state troopers since the 1970s as a reward for driving their own cars to work, leaving Massachusetts vulnerable to a potentially massive bill from the IRS.” Boston Globe FOR PROFIT VULTURE CAPITALISTS KNOW ALL ABOUT 'FOR PROFIT HEALTH CARE' ! HEAVEN HELP OUR VETERANS!  Partners HealthCare quietly advising Trump administration on how to fix VA At a Boston College Chief Executives Club event yesterday, Dr. John Noseworthy, chief executive of the Mayo Clinic, revealed that his organization and Boston’s Partners HealthCare have been quietly advising the Trump administration on how to improve care and services at the much-criticized Department of Veterans Affairs, reports the Globe’s Priyanka Dayal McCluskey. Boston Globe Senate passes bill giving consumers free credit freezes in wake of recent data breaches The state Senate yesterday approved a bill designed to make it easier for consumers to monitor and protect their credit – and to freeze or unfreeze their credit without fees, Shira Schoenberg reports at MassLive. The House has passed similar legislation in reaction to last year’s huge data breach at Equifax. MassLive CLICK ON LINK FOR MORE OR SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE

Right whale researchers attempt to disentangle ‘Kleenex’

By Mary Ann Bragg 

Posted Apr 13, 2018

PROVINCETOWN — A prolific North Atlantic right whale mother named Kleenex may eventually be freed from fishing line wrapped around her jaw for the past several years after a rescue effort Thursday on Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

“This is exactly the individual we are desperate to help,” said Scott Landry, who leads the center’s efforts to free marine animals from fishing gear.

The adult female, well-known to researchers, had been carrying rope wrapped around her upper jaw for at least three years, according to documented sightings. Because there was no trailing line on the rope, the usual technique of slowing the whale and keeping it at the surface by attaching buoys to the entanglement couldn’t be used, Landry said. Instead, the rescuers used a cutting arrow fired from the deck of the rescue boat to damage the rope on the animal, he said. The weakened rope should deteriorate and be shed by the whale over time, Landry said.

The entanglement of female right whales in fishing gear has been linked to energy depletion and inability of the females to sustain a pregnancy and a year of nursing a calf.

The critically endangered right whales need robust calving to help stop a decline in population that has has been detected since 2010, according to researchers.

The physical condition of Kleenex at the time of the disentanglement, though, was poor, according to a statement from the center.

“Her condition is compromised and she’s quite thin,” said Heather Pettis, an associate scientist with the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium. “We are hopeful that the lines (on her) degrade and part soon and that she is able to recover.”

Kleenex had first been spotted by researchers in 1977 in the Bay of Fundy but had not been seen by researchers since 2014. To date, she has had eight calves, the last of which was born in 2009, according to the North Atlantic right whale databases maintained by the aquarium. Of Kleenex’s eight calves, six are presumed to be alive. In turn, Kleenex is a grandmother to 12 calves including one, Couplet, who was found dead last year in George’s Bank, along with a female who was disentangled in 2016 by the Center for Coastal Studies and a male who was disentangled in the Gulf of St. Lawrence last year. Kleenex has six great-grandchildren as well.

An airplane survey team from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, part of the National Marine Fisheries Service, first spotted Kleenex Tuesday in Stellwagen Bank, and then directed the Center for Coastal Studies rescue boat to where the whale was feeding.

That same day, the Center for Coastal Studies made an unsuccessful first attempt to free her of the rope, said airplane surveyor Christin Khan.

“We were circling on several right whales feeding (among) sei whales when scientist Peter Duley recognized the right whale as Kleenex,” Khan said.

The surveyors then focused on getting good photographs of her and her entanglement and reported the sighting to a hotline, which prompted the Center for Coastal Studies’ boat response.

After the airplane surveyors saw Kleenex again on Thursday, the disentanglement team approached again by boat and made cuts in the rope.

Researchers are hoping to see Kleenex again in the next few days to determine if she has managed to loosen or shed the line, according to Center for Coastal Studies.

http://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20180413/right-whale-researchers-attempt-to-disentangle-kleenex

Path to extinction for North Atlantic right whales

Path to extinction for North Atlantic right whales