At its March meeting, the council threatened to complain to NOAA brass that Mike Tosatto, director of NMFS’ Pacific Islands Regional Office (PIRO), might not be the best man for the job if his office did not complete by the council’s June meeting consultations for U.S. fisheries in the Pacific that interact with oceanic whitetip sharks. The species was federally listed as threatened last year.
Earthjustice, on behalf of the Conservation Council for Hawai‘i and Kona resident Mike Nakachi, had earlier this year sent to Tosatto’s office a notice of intent to sue over the agency’s failure to complete the consultations in accordance with the timeline set forth in the Endangered Species Act.
When the council met in June, some of the consultations still weren’t finished. Instead of following through on its threat against Tosatto, however, the council voted to simply direct its staff to meet with PIRO’s Sustainable Fisheries Division staff after each council meeting to “review actions, develop timelines, set priorities, and agree to plans to complete tasks.”
“Staff and I can figure it out … so you and I have nothing to do with it,” council executive director Kitty Simonds told Tosatto.
The council also recommended that PIRO complete the consultations for the Hawai‘i deep-set longline and American Samoa longline fisheries by September 1, and the one for the U.S. tropical purse seine fishery by October 1, in accordance with the office’s own projections.
Finally, the council directed its staff to keep NOAA assistant administrator for fisheries Chris Oliver apprised of the consultation status and asked that Oliver “continue to provide oversight to ensure expeditious completion of high quality consultations.”
The fact that the consultations were still not complete “put the region’s largest domestic commercial fisheries at risk of litigation,” the council stated.
On June 26, NMFS did complete its consultation for the Hawai‘i shallow-set longline fishery. The agency’s biological opinion (BiOp) and incidental take statement says that the fishery would likely catch 102 oceanic whitetip sharks in a given year, killing 32 of them.
No annual caps were set on the number of animals that could be taken by the fishery, but the statement requires NMFS’s Sustainable Fisheries Division to develop measures (i.e., trip limits or limits on the number of sharks that can be taken before a vessel is required to fish elsewhere) to reduce the bycatch and increase survivability of the sharks, as well as giant manta rays, which are also federally listed as threatened.
The BiOp states that NMFS expects climate change will pose a minimal threat to the sharks, since they can adapt to habitat modifications and shifts in ocean currents, temperatures, and food web dynamics “by transiting to areas favorable to their biological and ecological needs.”
That conclusion doesn’t exactly jibe with a recent rapid vulnerability assessment of marine species throughout the Pacific. That more recent work determined that oceanic whitetip sharks were highly vulnerable to climate change effects that will occur in the next few decades. Lower surface oxygen, high sea surface temperature, and ocean acidification were the three factors that had the most impact.
—Teresa Dawson
Leave a Reply