Times & Tails

The Northern Cod Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, led by industry stakeholders, continues to make strides towards restoring the once-thriving Northern Atlantic cod stocks. Recent data suggests significant progress, marking a hopeful turn in the recovery efforts.

Canada and Alaska have recently inked a significant seven-year agreement aimed at rejuvenating the declining king salmon populations in the Yukon River basin. 

By analyzing 17 years of visual survey data and acoustic recordings, they created a statistical model to estimate whale populations and predict their distribution over time. This mapping aims to prevent harmful encounters with commercial fishing and vessel strikes.

A two-year-old whale calf, it's trapped in and into the vast ocean, the young whale opted to retreat to the far end of the lagoon and hide in the shallows...Despite this setback, Mr. Cottrell and his team, comprising over 40 experts ranging from veterinarians to drone specialists, are exploring alternative strategies. Their efforts over the past two weeks to entice the calf out of the lagoon near the remote village of Zaballos, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, have been unsuccessful so far.

Fishermen in Canada's largest lobster fishing district are gearing up to make a crucial decision this spring: whether to increase the minimum legal size of lobster they catch. Lobster harvesters in southwestern Nova Scotia, along with others across Atlantic Canada, must weigh the implications of matching an impending increase in the United States.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) will close most of the state’s commercial Dungeness crab fishery on Monday, April 8th. Zones 3, 4, 5, and 6, covering from Sonoma-Mendocino county to the U.S.-Mexico border, will be shut down at 6 p.m. due to the presence of humpback whales, with a 30-fathom depth limit on traps in zones 1 and 2, which span the rest of the coastline north to the Oregon border.

If the whales and sea turtles off our California coast could express gratitude, they would be applauding the efforts of our state's Ocean Protection Council (OPC). Recently, the OPC allocated over $1.8 million in state funding to mitigate the risk of whale and sea turtle entanglement in fishing gear used by California's fisheries.

In a daring rescue effort, a humpback whale ensnared in fishing ropes has been successfully liberated. The distressed adult whale, affectionately known as Ivy, was discovered offshore in Cornwall's Mounts Bay, nestled between Mousehole and Newlyn, on Easter Sunday. 

Expressing concerns over the dwindling population of North Atlantic right whales, an international environmental advocacy group has voiced disappointment with the Canadian government's perceived lack of progress in enhancing protections for these majestic creatures.