Ocean Conservation: taking steps in public awareness and gillnet management

Sometimes progress in ocean conservation must be measured in inches instead of yards. Whether that will be sufficient to ward off an ecosystem collapse or a species extinction depends on the specific issue and whether such progress might slowly build upon itself and begin to expand exponentially. In any event, it all has to start somewhere. Here are a couple of encouraging examples.

Ocean Conservation Exhibition in Taiwan
In Taiwan, this week saw the opening of a marine ecology exhibition in Taipei City's National Taiwan Museum. Designed to highlight the nation's unique ocean diversity (over 400 varieties of coral and 3,000 species of fish), the exhibition will feature live specimens including a red coral valued at over $344,000USD and a Japanese spider crab - the world's largest crab species - in addition to multimedia presentations that highlight coral spawning, mangroves, and shallow-water hydrothermal vents.

What makes this exhibition, which runs until early August, so special is that Taiwan is an important gateway to Asian markets for a variety of commercial seafood - much of which is being overfished. Asian cultures can often be resistant to outside influences or opinions that can be perceived as criticizing their way of life. An event such as this is an incremental step in changing public perceptions internally about endangered species, such as sharks and tuna, and developing a greater appreciation for marine natural resources - before they are all gone.

“As an island, Taiwan is inextricably tied up with the ocean,” said Huang Shu-fang, curator of the event and chief of the museum's research section. “It is important we learn about the abundant marine species and their habitats.” Echoing that sentiment was Jeng Ming-shiou of the Academia Sinica's Biodiversity Research Center. “We hope the event will help raise public awareness of the importance of protecting the ocean.”

Australian Gillnet Regulations
Commercial gillnets are notorious for claiming the lives of countless sea creatures that are discarded as accidental bycatch. In many cases, the majority of what gillnets ensnares is thrown away. Gillnets can catch sharks, turtles, even dolphins - anything that can get caught up in nets that can stretch for miles.

In southern Australia, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) has put additional gillnet management regulations into effect to better protect sea lions and other non-target species. The new regulations cover the Gillnet, Hook and Trap (GHAT) Sector of the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery.

“These changes are designed to offer better protection to non-target species in the fishery, particularly Australian sea lions, and to improve data collection on interactions with threatened, endangered and protected species,” said Dr. James Findlay, Chief Executive Officer of AFMA.

Predictably, representatives for the commercial shark fishing industry complained that the new gillnet regulations will increase their costs. However, gillnet fishermen have to take much of the blame for the need for stricter management policies as the commercial gillnet fishers have been shown to be under-reporting the level of interactions with threatened, endangered, and protected species.

“It is clear that some vessels have not been accurately reporting interactions with protected species as required as a condition of their access to the fishery. Accurate information on the level of fishery interactions with non-target species is essential to ensure that our fisheries are managed in an ecologically sustainable manner,” said Dr, Findlay.

In addition to a restriction in the use of gillnets in and around over 30 sea lion colonies, thereby doubling the total area under protection from 6,300 sq. kilometers to 18,500 sq kilometers, the use of either on-board scientific observers or remote cameras to monitor the catch was increased. Those vessels that participate in the remaining open gillnet fishing areas in South Australia will be continuously observed, either in person or electronically.

Ocean conservation, one step at a time. And, hopefully, not a second too late.

The Vaquita: Mexico's diminutive porpoise at risk of extinction

From the large and majestic humpback whale, mentioned in yesterday's post, we can travel to the other end of scale: the rare and diminutive Vaquita. Reaching a mere 5 feet in length, the vaquita is a member of the porpoise family and is only found in the northern end of the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California). And at a scientific meeting of the International Whaling Commission being held in Agadir, Morocco, the findings of a 2008 population study show that there are only approximately 250 vaquitas alive today. As disturbing as that low number may seem, it is even more disconcerting when compared to a 1997 population study that estimated the population to be 567 - a decrease of 55% in just one decade.

The vaquita is similar to other small porpoise species that inhabit deltas and river outlets (one such species in China was considered extinct by 2007). Probably attracted to the shallows of the Sea of Cortez near the mouth of the Colorado River, the vaquita's habitat was impacted by the damming of the river in the U.S.; but researchers do not believe this has been a detriment to the vaquita. What appears to be the primary cause for the vaquita's decline is its tendency to get caught in the gill nets of local fishermen - a tragic victim of bycatch.

The 2008 population study represents the combined efforts of both Mexican and U.S. research groups with additional government support. To conduct the study required an elaborate high-tech version of a common biodiversity technique: to determine basic biodiversity, a transect is used to define an area and then sealife is counted within that area. Doing that several times over a wider area, estimates can then be extrapolated. For the vaquita population, several vessels were used to make large surface transects within which visual sightings and results from hydrophones (which picked up the distinctive clicking sounds made by the vaquitas) were tallied. From that raw data, the current population of 250 was estimated.

Although their primary range is now within a protected reserve, as of 2005, and includes a ban on the use of gill nets; the vaquitas are still very much at risk from illegal fishing. A lack of resources to provide effective enforcement combined with the economic needs of subsistence-level fishermen continue to put the vaquitas at risk. Plans are being considered to introduce fishing techniques that do not use gill nets, but getting local fishermen to abandon their traditional fishing methods will be challenging.

According to Nature News, "A more immediate challenge is to expand the protected area. 'We need to get all the gill nets out of the water,' says Timothy Ragen, executive director of the Marine Mammal Commission in Bethesda, Maryland. But a broader ban would be a difficult economic and political challenge, pitting the vaquita against the livelihoods of local fishermen."

The unique vaquita is one more cetacean that stands at the brink of extinction - not from industrialized commercial fishing or whaling, but from the needs of local fisherman trying to survive. This is dilemma being played out in many other parts of the world.

Read more in Nature News.

Shark Nets: Thomas Peschak reports on the past and future

Shark Nets - long standing shark "deterrents" strung along some of the more popular beaches in South Africa and Australia - have become a source of concern among conservationists. It's a concern perhaps not as widely shared among the general population, or beach goers in particular, because of a fundamental lack of understanding as to what the nets can or cannot do.

In an excellent article in Africa Geographic, written by premier underwater photographer Thomas Peschak, chief photographer for the Save Our Seas Foundation, the history and issues regarding South Africa's shark nets are detailed.

As Thomas, a South African himself, points out, the nets have been in place in his country for over 40 years, totaling some 27 miles by the late '80s. The problem with the nets is that they actually don't deter or keep out the sharks - they catch and kill them. The Natal Sharks Board reported that nearly 34 thousand sharks were caught in these nets from 1978 to 2008, the majority of which were species that posed no threat to humans. Interestingly, for those who felt safe from any "killer" shark, a large percentage of the sharks were caught on the beach side of the net, as the shark was making its way out of the area.

But the nets - basically gill nets by design - are random killers, catching turtles, dolphins, and even whales. This unintended bycatch has fueled the conservation debate and the trend in South Africa is slowly moving towards the use of drum lines (baited hooks) and even a possible reduction of the use of any nets or deterrents at all in less populated beaches.

Peschak takes the realistic position that we can not expect all nets or deterrents to disappear any time soon; as long as there are large numbers of beach goers - representing a sizable tourist economy - then the priority of providing a "safe" beach will probably prevail. But he asks the proverbial question: if science can make such advances as cancer cures and moon landings, could we not come up with a method of shark deterrence that is less destructive? I concur. The methods have not changed much in 3 to 4 decades and have only reinforced both the idea that humans have a greater right to the oceans than its inhabitants and that sharks as a whole are dangerous and must be dealt with severely (an attitude illustrated in the Australian press regarding the government policy to hunt down and slaughter any shark reported to have been involved in biting a human).

Click here to view a great video of Thomas Peschak discussing the history and status of SA shark nets (contains a PDF download link to his Africa Geographic article).

Loggerhead Turtles: threatened by new Hawaii and Florida regs

The fate of sea turtles, particularly the loggerhead sea turtle, is once again at further risk - this time due to a loosening of U.S. regulations for the longline fisheries in Hawaii and Florida, fisheries that are in pursuit of swordfish and must deal with sea turtles (and many other unfortunate species) as accidental bycatch.

A suit was filed this week against the National Marine Fisheries Service by Earth Justice on behalf of The Center for Biological Diversity, Caribbean Conservation organizations, Defenders of Wildlife, Gulf Restoration Network, and Turtle Island Restoration Network. The suit states that while the Fisheries Service has filed reports that claim that the loggerhead sea turtles face extinction unless the numbers of commercially caught turtles are reduced, they have also proposed a change in longline regulations that would allow for more longlines - literally more hooks in the water - that would produce a three-fold increase in turtle bycatch. The loggerhead sea turtle is currently on the endangered species list, so these new regulations, obviously designed to increase the catch of swordfish, would seem to run counter to the intent of protection required by the Endangered Species Act.

The swordfish fisheries, particularly in Hawaii, have experienced closure at times in the past, even during the past U.S. administration, so it is particularly disheartening to see the influence of the commercial fishing industry on the new administration.

And then on top of it all, we're talking about increasing capacity for commercially-caught swordfish - a fish that currently provides in one 8 oz. fillet over 4 times the acceptable level of mercury for the week. That's a month's worth in one sitting. What crazy, fish-hugging radicals came up with those levels? The government's own Environmental Protection Agency. (Check out GotMercury.org.)

Read press release from Courthouse News Service.
If you would like to add your voice in protest to the new regs, click here.

Sharks On The Agenda: international RFMO consider better management

A recent meeting held in San Sebastian, Spain by the Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMO) produced some consensus on the need to control and better manage shark fisheries. The RFMOs are an international matrix of regional territories, each territory including certain key countries, with the responsibility of managing fisheries to not only insure their commercial future but the conservation of the species involved ranging from tuna to sharks to turtles to sea birds.

Concern over major fish stocks like tuna had preoccupied the RFMOs for some time but now concern has been raised regarding shark populations and the taking of sharks either deliberately or as accidental bycatch.

In a recent press release from Oceana:

Fishing Nations Seek Cooperative Action to Manage Shark Fisheries Worldwide

Washington -- Oceana issued the following statement from senior vice president for North America and chief scientist Dr. Michael F. Hirshfield in response to decisions made today in San Sebastian to manage shark fisheries worldwide.

"Oceana is encouraged by the language adopted today in San Sebastian concerning sharks and is pleased that fishing nations have included commitments for cooperative actions and concrete measures to regulate shark fisheries. These vulnerable species have suffered a lack of attention for far too long, and we now hope to see precautionary and ecosystem-based management implemented for sharks worldwide.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas seeks the cooperative management for 72 shark species, but today scientific advice only exists for two of them. Oceana shows that there is need to establish precautionary fishing limits for shark species caught in international waters.

Oceana would like to commend the United States delegation, with additional efforts by the European Union, for their persistence and commitment to ensuring that action-forcing language was adopted at the meeting,

Sharks are no longer ‘off the books' for the world's RFMOs. The world's regional tuna fishery management organizations are now on notice that they need to take specific, concrete steps to conserve sharks as soon as possible. We look forward to working with fishery managers to ensure that commitments made today result in true, in-the-water protections for sharks."

Good news but it will take continued vigilance to insure that their actions are sufficient and that there is the proper observance and enforcement to make it stick.

Bycatch, Arctic Ice, Methlymercury: still issues to keep an eye on

Seaweb.org recently released some interesting ocean conservation news - a bit of a mixed bag really.

The U.S. has been making some marked improvement in regulating the level of bycatch by commercial fishing operations. Bycatch is a critical issue in ocean conservation as it represents millions of tons of wasted sealife, from the loss of marine mammals, sharks, and turtles in longline nets to the "scorched earth" effect exhibited in shrimp harvesting techniques. Through the application of four different regulatory laws or agencies (the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and the Endangered Species Act), the level of bycatch is being federally monitored and managed through the use of government observers.

One major issue though is the problem of having four different pieces of regulatory legislation, each with its own focus or emphasis on a particular situation or species. Involving this many cooks makes it difficult to get a more unifying and holistic approach to the entire issue. A recent report issued by Duke University's Marine Laboratory cited an approach by NOAA to establish a single set of regulations in 2006 for the Mid-Atlantic gillnet fisheries that proved to be a promising model and suggests that a review of existing regulations to develop a more cohesive strategy should be undertaken.

I had the opportunity to fly over the Northwest Passage in 2007 and see for myself the shrinking summer sea ice that had reached its lowest level in recorded history that year. As one could expect, there was a lot of alarming news coverage predicting an ice-free Northwest Passage within a few decades. Many computer models predicted the Arctic would lose its summer sea ice by 2080. But according to research by UCLA's Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department, many of those models relied on ice data that reflected a gradual decline, but did not include the data from recent ice levels.

With the growing awareness of the feedback effect of melting ice (exposing more heat-absorbing ocean to sunlight, thereby accelerating the melting process), the department's revised computer models move the clock forward by almost 20 years wherein we will be faced with an Arctic region devoid of most, if not all of its, summer sea ice - a monumental ringing of the alarm bell that global warming is now upon us.

Methylmercury - that dangerous party favor that lies within much of the seafood we consume - must share its host fish with the more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. Can a risk/benefit analysis determine which seafood would be more or less safe depending on species and frequency of consumption? This was the question that was studied recently and reported in Environmental Health Perspectives. The results of the study were not definitive but suggested that such a matrix could be developed. The report noted that farmed salmon, herring, and trout had a significant higher benefit vs. risk based on levels of methylmercury and omega-3 fatty acids. The opposite was true for swordfish and shark. Flounder and canned light tuna had a small benefit, while canned white tuna and halibut had a small risk.

While the elimination of all methylmercury should be our ongoing focus, such a risk/benefit analysis matrix would be helpful in dealing with current seafood stocks, since methylymercury is retained in the tissues and would be present in many species for some time in the future.