Working to Prevent Whale Entanglements

Across the West Coast, marine mammals are sometimes found entangled in fishing gear. Recently, there has been a large increase in entanglements, particularly humpback whales in crab pot gear. Each state has been working since 2020 to develop a Conservation Plan to be approved by NOAA’s NMFS, to reduce entanglements while allowing the fishery to legally operate.  Multi-stakeholder advisory groups are working with each state (California, Oregon and Washington) to identify key issues and provide guidance and recommendations to the crab fishing industry to reduce marine mammal entanglement and mortality.  In addition, the tri-state Dungeness Crab group, facilitated by PSMFC’s Dave Colp, has been working on inter-state coordination of line marking systems to distinguish each state’s Dungeness crab gear from eachother as well as from other fisheries.  This information is necessary since at least 50% of entanglements cannot be attributed to specific fisheries or states, making it difficult to devise solutions.  PSMFC’s Fran Recht, has been working to promote the testing of alternative gear.

PSMFC has been involved in this entanglement issue since 2017, working to investigate and encourage gear innovations and testing, initially facilitated the Washington Whale Entanglement working group, and currently participating in the California and Oregon whale entanglement working groups.

HELP REPORT AND DOCUMENT ENTANGLED WHALES. 

This placard has been developed to encourage people to report and photo-document entangled whales and stand by until a relief vessel arrives, so we can learn more about how the whale is entangled and what gear is involved so we might be able to figure out how to adapt the gear.  Reporting an entangled whale and standing by may help experts be able to respond and try to free it.

REPORT WHALE SIGHTINGS:  Whale Alert–a phone app is availale to report your sightings and the location of live, dead, and entangled whales.

Resources and Information

GEAR INNOVATION– SCIENTIFIC PAPERS

GEAR INNOVATION– INPUT FROM FISHERMEN AND MARINE MAMMAL EXPERTS ON VARIOUS IDEAS, GEAR MARKING

Though entanglement rates are of concern for the whales, they are luckily relatively rare events.  It is difficult to scientifically test the efficacy of gear innovations, though a few studies have been conducted.  Knowledge from whale experts, including those that are involved in disentangling whales, provide information on the logical means that seem likely to help whales. The ones thought most likely to reduce whale entanglement rates or injury or mortality when whales get entangled are those that reduce the number of vertical lines in the water (that go from the gear to the surface), e.g. management reductions in pot numbers, ropeless (pop-up) gear or longlining gear and those that reduce the strength of the line so that whales can break free of them when entangled.   It will be crucial to mark gear with innovation, so that if an entanglement occurs we will know if gear with innovations happen to still be found on the whale.  Input from Doug Sandilands from SR3 and other whale experts familiar with gear marking systems used on the east coast, is here.

In order to reduce the amount of vertical lines in the water (going from the crab pot to the surface buoy), the long-lining of gear, that is the attachment of pots to a ground line between them has been suggested.   Stringing pots together might also make innovations such as ropeless gear more financially feasible. However, there are operational and enforcement challenges which was why crab pot longlining, once allowed by the states was discontinued.  Additionally, there are potential risks from heavier gear for the whales, though also potential benefits with the use of the Yale Grip concept.

  •    “YALE GRIP “ SLEEVES TO CREATE A WEAK LINK IN THE LINE

Because the strength of fishing ropes have been linked to the severity of right whale injury and mortality (see Knowlton et. al), the use of reduced breaking strength line has been suggested and evaluated:  This report, Development and Evaluation of Reduced Breaking Strength Rope to Reduce Large Whale Entanglement Severity tested load strengths during lobster pot hauling, did a simulation on a whale model of the forces exerted when whales became entangled in rope, and evaluated which gear configurations, current speeds, wave heights, etc. might achieve a 1700 lb breaking strength that might allow whales to break the line and reduce entanglement severity and mortality.      Though weaker lines as a whole were not able to be tested, a modification of this idea, to use  short lengths of the hollow, braided NOVABRAID sleeve as a “Yale Grip” to create areas of reduced breaking strength, was pioneered by a Massachusetts lobster fishermen and his group, the South Shore Lobster Fishermen’s Association. These inexpensive  “Yale Grips”  are like the finger traps of our childhood.  You insert your fingers into each end and pull– the harder you pull the tighter it gets.  These sleeves, placed in the middle of two sections of stronger line, create a weaker breaking strength area (about 1700 lbs) where the lines come together.   Results of the east coast tests are found here. Testing and modeling on the east coast indicates that the weak link should be below where the whale encounters the line in order to break and reduce the severity of the entanglement. 

Fishermen on the west coast have tested use of these sleeves.  Two fisherman, Calder Deyerle, in Monterey Bay and John Mellor out of San Francisco Bay have been using Yale Grips for the last two seasons and report on their use in the link below.  Deyerle fishes with them throughout his line and Mellor fishes with them in the upper 10 fathoms. Reports from tests by other fishermen (Dick Ogg out of Bodega Bay) are also included as are the tests done in Washington.   While fishermen testing lines in WA indicated that these links broke (as expected) when lines had to be yanked hard to free pots that had silted in, they may work well in less challenging conditions.  Information on west coast testing and use is here.

More testing is necessary to see if fishermen can effectively fish with these weak links inserted periodically throughout the line. 

  • ROPELESS GEAR  (POP-UP GEAR)

There are a number of developers working to test both on-demand (acoustically triggered) systems and timed (galvanic release or programmed timer) systems.  A few of these systems are already in use or being tested elsewhere in the world.  There have also been some tests on the west coast, including a gear demonstration day in California that brought together many manufacturers, fishermen, and managers to test various devices for their operational function and to provide the opportunity for the gear designers to understand fishermen’s constraints.    In addition to the gear constraints, there is a need for fishermen and other vessels towing gear, enforcement officers, and managers to be able to know where the gear is.  A system that integrates into vessel plotters efficiently and in real transmission time is necessary.  The constraints and promises of these systems has been examined in the Ropeless Gear workshops held on the east coast. 

Because pop-up systems will need to document the position of the pots on the seafloor (or at least the position where they were deployed) and document the number of pots being used, the Quinault Indian Tribe vessel monitoring system which integrates these features may be of interest. 

California has developed Guidelines for those wanting to research and develop pop-up gear.

OTHER IDEAS

  • PINGERS– CAN THEY HELP DEAL WITH HUMPBACK ENTANGLEMENTS? — information from marine mammal experts and tests                                                                                                                              
  • NEUTRAL BUOYANCY LINE

Fisherman John Mellor has conceptualized the use of neutral buoyancy line as a means of reducing entanglements.  This idea, integrated with weak links, have received a preliminary nod from some whale scientists as potentially providing benefits to reduce whale entanglement.  The idea is described here.

WORKSHOPS AND REPORTS

  • A Whale Entanglement Science Workshop was held virtually in five sessions between August 25 and September 3, 2020.  The detailed agenda is on the Ocean Protection Council website at the link above. The workshop’s purpose was to look at the state of the science available to inform development of management strategies to reduce whale and sea turtle entanglement risk within US West Coast fixed-gear fisheries.  The workshop featured presentations by researchers and targeted discussions with invited fishery managers and fishing industry and NGO stakeholders actively working to reduce risk of entanglement in West Coast fisheries.  That OPC website linked above will provide access to the workshop report and presentations (including potentially, the audio recordings of the presentations).                                                                                                                                                        
  • Forensic Review Workshop Report

Thirty-one experts including fishermen, whale entanglement responders, scientists, managers and gear experts met in Long Beach, California August 28-29, 2018 to review and discuss the collective knowledge about whale entanglements and the forensic data that has been collected from examining photographs and looking at gear removed from entangled whales to determine how the whales become entangled or where the gear lands up on the whales. The intent was to enhance the understanding of common characteristics of whale entanglements in fixed gear fisheries, including Dungeness crab gear. This information will help provide insights into ways to improve forensic analysis and entanglement reporting, gear marking, and ultimately the best management practices and gear innovations that can help address this issue.

        Appendix A Forensic Review Workshop Intro

Appendix B _Entanglement overview

Appendix C Introduction to Case Studies

Appendix D Introduction to Forensic Review

Appendix E-CCS-PNW-Comparison-Aug_2018-DS-FOR REPORT

Appendix F Entanglement Injuries Forensics Workshop PFolkens

Appendix G Response Case Studies

Appendix H Forensic Review

Appendix I photo documentation training_CaliWorkshop_report

Appendix J Homework FR

Appendix K Best Management Directives – all 3 states

Appendix L Forensics Homework

Appendix M Gear ID forensics

Appendix N DungCrabGearSupplierSurvey

Appendix O gear behavior

 

Thirty-nine crab fishermen, gear specialists, and marine mammal specialists from Washington, Oregon and California attended a two day workshop, convened by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission in Portland, Oregon, March 29-30, 2017. The purpose of the workshop was to share information about entanglements on the U.S. West Coast, general knowledge of gear behavior and whale behavior, and fishing innovations and other options to reduce entanglements.

  • Final Report for the Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program grant funded by NOAA. This project, entitled: Addressing Marine Mammal Entanglement in the West Coast Dungeness Crab Fishery, sponsored the two workshops whose results are posted below as well as worked with fishermen and gear researchers to test potential innovations.
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  • Ropeless Gear Workshops — Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium have sponsored workshops beginning in 2017.  The 2018 workshop was a follow up to the one conducted in  2017 and was entitled: Overcoming Development, Regulatory and Funding Challenges for Rope-less Fishing in the U.S. and Canada.  The 2019 workshop had information on the status of gear marking systems, gear development, and more information on science, government and legal issues. 

 Entanglement Reports

Lawsuit