On behalf of my co-authors, I am pleased to announce the publication of* NOAA-TM-NMFS-SWR-044: Understanding the co-occurrence of large whales and commercial fixed gear fisheries off the west coast of the United States. *
Large whale entanglement in commercial fishing gear in the Pacific Ocean off the U.S. west coast has been identified as an issue of concern by NOAA Fisheries because of the potential impacts to both large whales (individually and at a stock/population level) and the commercial fishing industry. An average of 10 large whales were reported per year as entangled off California, Oregon, and Washington from 2000 to 2012. This is likely an underestimate of total entanglements since sightings are opportunistic. Because so little is known about the origin of and identification of entangling gear types, an investigation of large whale entanglements was warranted. As a result, we developed a model to analyze the co-occurrence of fishing gear and whales. Fixed gear commercial fishery effort was modeled for 11 fixed gear fisheries in the off the U.S. west coast based on reported landings. Fishery effort was overlapped with previously published whale density* *models to identify timing and areas of low and elevated co-occurrence, and consequently entanglement risk, for five species of large whales across the U.S. west coast. This effort represents the first assessment of whale entanglement risk on the U.S. west coast across all of these fixed gear fisheries, describing the necessary assumptions and limitations of the available data and analysis. Our expectation is that research on the elevated risk areas identified by this paper should inform any future efforts to minimize or mitigate the risk of large whale entanglements in the future. The NOAA technical memorandum and appendices can be accessed at: http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/protected_species/marine_mammals/fisheries_interactions_assess_risk.html If you have any questions or would like a PDF of the report, please feel free to contact me. Have a wonderful day. -- Lauren Saez Contractor with Ocean Associates, Inc. NMFS West Coast Region Protected Resources Division Phone: 562-980-3561 Email: lauren.s...@noaa.gov
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