Tag Archives: Dave Casoni

Ropes are latest flashpoint in tug of war over right whales

The lobster industry is willing to consider switching to weaker rope to protect the endangered right whale from deadly entanglements, but whale defenders say that doesn’t go far enough to help a species that can’t bear even one more death. A team of scientists, regulators, animal rights groups and fishermen met this week in Providence to review proposals,,, The team is advising the National Marine Fisheries Service on how to prevent whales from getting entangled in fishing gear as they migrate, feed and mate as they travel back and forth along the East Coast of the United States and Canada. >click to read<11:54

How lobstermen gather temperature data from the bottom of the ocean

A few decades ago, Jim Manning wanted to know what was at the bottom of the sea. And after years of studying waterways on the Atlantic coast, he says he’s seen a steady change in ocean temperatures that he calls ‘unprecedented.’ Manning is an oceanographer at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He partners with lobstermen on the Northeast Shelf from Maine to New York, attaching low-cost temperature and depth loggers to some of the millions of lobster traps deployed throughout New England. The project, called eMOLT (Environmental Monitors on Lobster Traps) records and plots . click here to read the story 09:31