As the working group convened by the\u00a0Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Western Pacific Fishery ManagementCouncil developed its criticisms of measures intended to reduce the bycatch of false\u00a0killer whales by the Hawai\u2018i longline fleet, actual interactions between the longliners and false killer whales in waters around Hawai\u2018i have been increasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As of mid-July, nine interactions had\u00a0been observed. Of the three that occurred inside the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), two were determined to have resulted in serious injury to the animals involved, while one resulted in its death. Of the six that occurred beyond the 200-mile boundary of the EEZ, preliminary\u00a0determinations are that five resulted in\u00a0serious injury; one has been preliminarily determined to have been non-serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the Take Reduction Plan approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the take \u2013 representing the mortality or serious injury of an animal (M&SI) \u2013 of false killer whales caught inside the\u00a0EEZ can be no more than 16 per year before restrictions on fishing grounds are put into\u00a0place. That number is the so-called Potential Biological Removal (PBR) set under\u00a0the Marine Mammal Protection Act \u2013 the\u00a0level of harm that can be sustained by a population of marine mammals without its chances for recovery being jeopardized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The PBR is calculated not by the number of animals that are taken in the presence of on-board observers, but by multiplying the number of observed takes that are judged to be serious or deadly by the fraction of the fleet on which observers are placed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until COVID-19 hit, that percentage was 20, or one-fifth of the deep-set longline fleet that targets bigeye tuna. The M&SI of three observed animals within the EEZ would extrapolate to 15 animals killed or seriously injured fleetwide, just one below the actual number taken so far this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the pandemic hit, the percentage\u00a0of coverage has been closer to 15 percent, or between a sixth and a seventh of the fleet. With that level of coverage, three animals killed or seriously injured extrapolates to\u00a0between 18 and 21 for the total fleet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Mike Tosatto, administrator\u00a0of the NMFS\u2019 Pacific Islands Regional Office, said that in 2020, observer rates were increasing, so the extrapolation rate remains based on an observer rate of 20 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2019, when the calculated rate of M&SI exceeded PBR, it led to the closure of the southern exclusion zone (SEZ), an area south of the Main Hawaiian Islands that represents about 17 percent of the total available fishing grounds for longliners within the EEZ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The SEZ was reopened last August and has not been closed yet for 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Interactions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The SEZ had been opened just a few\u00a0months when the first two false killer whale interactions of 2021 were observed on January 4, both outside the EEZ. The same vessel was involved in both interactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the first case, at around 7:20 p.m.,\u00a0the animal surfaced and the crew grabbed the line, but, according to a NMFS summary, \u201cthe line broke while in the hands of the crew … before any action could be taken.\u201d \u201cThe hook, weight, leader, and 1.9\u00a0m[eter] of line remained on the whale,\u201d the\u00a0observer noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second interaction occurred about two hours later. \u201cThe crew took the line in hand and were struggling to pull in enough line to tie off,\u201d the NMFS report\u00a0states. \u201cAt that point, the captain arrived\u00a0on deck and instructed the crew to tie off the line to the cleat. Once the line was tied off, it broke. The whale was hooked in the mouth and the observer could see the leader but not the hook. The observer noted the whale\u2019s behavior as struggling and\u00a0distressed throughout the interaction. After\u00a0the line broke, the whale dove and was not seen again. The hook, weight, leader, and 1 m of line remained on the whale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both of these interactions have been given a preliminary determination as serious injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third interaction of the year occurred two weeks later, on January 18,\u00a0inside the EEZ. In that case, 12 meters of line remained on the whale. This was\u00a0given a final determination by NMFS as\u00a0a serious injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In March, another interaction inside the EEZ was classified as serious. In this case, \u201cthe line was leading towards the mouth, but it was not clear if the hook was in the mouth or ingested. The crew attempted to tie off the line, when the line suddenly snapped and broke. The hook, weight, leader, and 8.9 m of branchline remained on the animal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third interaction noted inside the\u00a0EEZ occurred on April 17 and resulted in the animal\u2019s death. \u201cA false killer whale came up tail first and unresponsive, with the mainline and multiple branchlines (observer estimated 7 branchlines) entangled around\u00a0the fluke,\u201d the NMFS report states. \u201cSeveral\u00a0hooks were embedded in the animal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From May 6 to June 17, four more\u00a0interactions were recorded by observers,\u00a0all occurring outside the EEZ. No final\u00a0determinations had been made for these\u00a0interactions as of mid-July. However, three of these four were preliminarily classified as serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n — Patricia Tummons<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the working group convened by the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Western Pacific Fishery ManagementCouncil developed its criticisms of measures intended to reduce the bycatch of false killer whales by the Hawai‘i longline fleet, actual interactions between the longliners and … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[486,8],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-13770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-august-2021","category-fisheries","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}