Flowers, a heart-shaped box of chocolates, a warm and tender love song, and a glittery card with completely over-the-top sugary sentiment…these are the tokens of affection we most recognize on Valentine’s Day. If you’re one of the lucky ones, that special someone will deliver a heartfelt token that makes your day even more meaningful.

It could be surprising to many people that in our complex and amazing world of ocean animals there are several creatures known for displaying the type of deep affection and commitment of which only romance novelists can dream. Tropical angelfish and at least one type of Australian seahorse are not strangers to life-long love beneath the waves. (And, by the way, is there any name more apropos to a day celebrating intimacy and devotion than that of the deep-sea sponge known as “Venus’s flower basket?”) There is even a small unglamorous freshwater fish known as the convict cichlid which pairs off into a crevasse made into a home to raise their children.

Without a doubt, our own Atlantic Wolffish exhibits the special bond of love suitable for Cupid’s attention. Male and female pairs (who reportedly mate for 3 to 6 hours at a time and practice internal fertilization, a rarity in fish) seek out their own special love nest under a craggy rock, or maybe down along the hull of a sunken wreck, just big enough to guard the egg mass laid by the female. The male wolffish, exhibiting no scientifically observed “commitment issues,” stands guard at his cave haven ensuring the protection of the growing larvae and juvenile offspring. The male is so devoted that he stops eating for as long as he is on guard, sometimes as long as four months. Not only is the wolffish pair committed to each other, they are highly loyal to their habitat.

Without a place to call their own, the wolffish love story could have an unhappy ending. With wolffish numbers having declined drastically in the last three decades, the connection between wolffish and their undisturbed habitat is even more important. Wolffish are still caught as bycatch in trawls and, possibly even more damaging to their long-term survival, their rocky habitat gets swept away by trawls and nesting areas can be buried in the sediment stirred up by trawling gear. Recreational anglers often catch wolffish, but it’s proven that the wolffish can be safely returned to the sea with the proper “catch and release” practice. (Wolffish do not have a swim bladder that “blows up” on the surface.) For both recreational and commercial fishermen in federal and state waters in New England it is illegal to possess or land Atlantic wolffish. If enforced properly, this can be a great step forward for wolffish conservation.

Now, it may be said that the Atlantic wolffish has a face that only its mother could truly love. But isn’t that the mystery of love itself – finding one’s counterpoint in the ocean of uncertainty can be anything but predictable.

Why does CLF heart estuaries? For so many reasons. Estuaries are one of nature’s great ideas. Not just an elegant transition from freshwater to saltwater, estuaries also provide rich feeding grounds for coastal birds and are important places for fish and other marine life to reproduce. Their sheltered waters and unique vegetation provide juvenile animals with places to hide and find food. This is why estuaries are often called the “nurseries of the sea.”

Some of New England’s best known estuaries include Casco Bay, the many small bays and inlets of Massachusetts’ shore, the Great Bay in New Hampshire and, of course, Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. Estuaries are great places for recreation and tourism. Boating, bird-watching, and fishing are some of our favorite estuary pastimes. Not only are estuaries beneficial to us for relaxing and enjoying nature, they are extremely valuable and provide other services as well. They are natural filters – storing and trapping pollutants and sediments that come off the land, preventing them from reaching the blue water. They also provide protection from coastal flooding. With all these wonderful reasons, what’s not to love about estuaries!

CLF works to protect and restore these amazing and valuable places with a network of like-minded conservation groups across the nation. Restore America’s Estuaries is a national alliance of coastal conservation organizations committed to protecting and restoring the lands and waters essential to the richness and diversity of coastal life. The challenge we all face is to make sure our estuaries and other waterways receive the care and proper management they deserve. Restoring degraded streams and rivers is a great way to provide healthy estuaries and the benefits we love and depend upon. If you love estuaries too (and we know you do), then take a minute to share the love online through the I Heart Estuaries Facebook page. Let the Congress and the Administration know of your heartfelt desire to see New England’s estuaries receive better protection and stewardship.

February 6 - Peter Shelley to NEFMC: Shut Down New England Cod Fishery - Last Wednesday, January 30, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to cut catch limits for New England’s cod stocks by 61-77% from their 2012 levels. Conservation Law Foundation Senior Counsel Peter Shelley made this statement to the Council urging cautious management and asking them to consider shutting down the New England cod fishery so stocks can recover.

February 8 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, February 8 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, industry members respond to cod catch cuts; lobstermen discuss options for avoiding a glut; northern shrimp catches are low; new dogfish research says they don’t migrate as much as expected; Carl Safina supports groundfish closed areas; John Tierney introduces a new diaster relief bill, Vito Giacalone is exonerated by an independent review.

January 28 - New England’s Protected Waters are Threatened - Parts of New England’s waters set aside to protect cod, haddock, flounder, and other important fish could soon be subjected to some of the most damaging forms of large-scale fishing. Learn more about this 5000 square mile area with this interactive map.

January 29 - Investing in the Future: A Down East Groundfish Closed Area - Last week, the Groundfish Committee of the New England Fishery Management Council agreed to analyze a proposal for a new closed area off of eastern Maine that would protect known juvenile aggregations and historic spawning aggregations of groundfish, and important habitat. The current economic impacts of closing this area to groundfishing may be negligible, and this closed area promises significant benefits to the region and to Maine’s small boat fleet.

January 29 - “The Fish Just Aren’t There.” - There is no question that the expected reductions in annual catch limits (ACLs) will be difficult for an industry already in a declared disaster. But while these cuts for cod and haddock limits have grabbed headlines, the real story is that there simply aren’t enough fish. The science, the catch data and many fishermen say the populations of many important species are at or near all-time lows. Fishery regulators are eager to cushion the blow to those whose livelihoods are at risk. Unfortunately, many proposals intended to help fishermen do not address the real problem—a lack of fish—and instead risk further harm to weakened fish populations.

January 31 - CLF Calls to Shut Down New England Cod Fishery - Yesterday the story of New England’s cod fishery took another tragic turn when the New England Fishery Management Council voted to drastically cut catch limits for New England’s two cod stocks—Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod—by 77 and 61 percent, respectively. Now is not the time for denial. It is not the time for timid decisions and unconscionable risk. It is time to make the painful, necessary steps towards a better future for fishing in New England. Rather than arguing over the scraps left after decades of mismanagement, we should shut the cod fishery down and protect whatever cod are left.

February 1 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, February 1 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the New England Fishery Management Council cuts cod catch limits and debates habitat protection measures and at-sea monitoring costs; Tom Nies is named the new Executive Director of NEFMC; a Gloucester trawler is accused of using an illegal net liner.

Yesterday the story of New England’s cod fishery took another tragic turn when the New England Fishery Management Council voted to drastically cut catch limits for New England’s two cod stocks—Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod—by 77 and 61 percent, respectively.

The Council’s action follows months of scientific debate on appropriate catch limits for cod. Recent assessments showed stocks at the lowest levels ever recorded and declining rapidly:

• Georges Bank cod biomass is at just 7% of healthy, sustainable levels.
• Gulf of Maine cod biomass is at 13-18% of healthy, sustainable levels.
• The last better-than-average year for young Georges Bank cod production was 1991.
• The amount of younger fish becoming available for fishing, known as recruitment, has been at the lowest estimated levels ever for the last five years running.

Confirming this dismal outlook, fishermen have been unable to find enough cod to even come close to filling their small quotas. The fish just aren’t there any more.

Despite this grim outlook, some in the industry asked for interim measures that would allow devastating overfishing to continue for yet another year, and the Massachusetts fisheries agency representative on the Council inexplicably asked for catch levels that were higher than the highest recommendations from scientists. NOAA regional administrator John Bullard rejected these efforts as legally and biologically unjustifiable.

Bullard told the Council yesterday that the “day of reckoning” for the fishery had arrived and that further management denial about the true state of the stocks could not be sanctioned. In this context, the Council chose to cut the catch – even in the face of industry opposition.

But the action to cut cod quota did not go far enough. The options implemented by the Council are the least aggressive cuts allowable by law, and under some assessments they still authorize overfishing. They push the limits of scientific advice and put the short-term economic interests over the long-term health of New England’s cod fishery and the viability of a whole generation of groundfishermen. Years of similarly short-sighted decision-making have caused the current biological disaster.

The Council unanimously rejected a motion to shut down the cod fishery entirely—an option that the NMFS Regional Director labeled as irresponsible, but one that may be the only chance for the recovery of New England’s cod stocks.

Canada took similar action to shut down its cod fishery in 1992, when its stocks were in a state remarkably similar to New England’s current disaster. Even their action in retrospect was too little and too late to avert a social and economic calamity; tens of thousands of people were put out of work, and cod stocks have still not fully recovered.

Unlike Canada, however, New England fishing communities are unlikely to see massive disaster relief funds. The New England Fishery Management Council now owns this problem and will bear full responsibility for the long term biological and socio-economic  consequences of their decision. While CLF hopes that the Council’s gamble is not reckless, decades of bad Council bets in the past and the current scientific advice do not bode well. Time will tell.

Now is not the time for denial. It is not the time for timid decisions and taking unconscionable risks. It is time to make the painful, necessary steps towards a better future for fishing in New England. Rather than arguing over the scraps left after decades of mismanagement, we should shut the cod fishery down and protect whatever cod are left.

Have you ever been at a noisy party and couldn’t hear the guy next to you? Or been on your phone when a fire truck went by and you couldn’t hear the conversation? Or gone to a rock concert and had a “hearing hangover” for hours afterwards? This sort of thing happens in the ocean, too, except marine life can’t just leave the party or put in earplugs (well, most of them can’t, anyway).

Sound travels really well in seawater, but light does not, so ocean animals rely on sound for a variety of reasons. For example, New England’s oyster toadfish will signal his mate that he’s got a nest ready for spawning by making a “boat-whistle” call. Lots of other fish make and use noise not only to attract a mate, but to scare off predators, or tell other fish to stay out of their territory. Check out this fun set of fish calls to hear more. Marine mammals make noise, too – whales use sound to hunt, navigate, avoid predators, bond with their young, and generally communicate with each other.

But our oceans are getting noisier and it’s harder for marine life to use sound they way they need to. Too much noise can harm ocean animals in a variety of ways. It can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss, make it hard for the animal to find food, separate a mother and calf, or even lead to strandings or death. Shipping, ocean dredging, seismic surveys for energy development or seafloor mapping, military exercises, and fishing – all can make for a noisy ocean environment.

Researchers are only just starting to make progress in mapping out our ocean noise, to help us get a handle on how to reduce the impact of it on wildlife. For an example, look at these new maps of ocean noise in the North Atlantic. Unfortunately there is a lot of uncertainty about what kinds of sound are worst for marine life, and at what levels.

There is not a robust regulatory mechanism for addressing ocean noise pollution in a comprehensive way. The procedures for addressing harm to marine mammals differ among various sound producers—for example, commercial shippers, fishermen and aquaculture operators, the military, the oil and gas industry, and the academic community. In general, ocean and coastal resources are currently managed by more than 20 federal agencies and administered through a web of more than 140 different and often-conflicting laws and regulations.

We need to do better, and we can.

An example of how we can learn to better coordinate ocean noise and wild animals is right here in the Gulf of Maine. Our critically endangered North Atlantic right whales need to be able to hear and use sound even more than they need to be able to see. Researchers from the Cornell University Bioacoustics Research Program have spent the past few years studying whales and noise in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. They have found that today’s whales, as compared to 50 years ago, live in a world of “acoustic smog,” and that “cumulative noise from all the shipping traffic is making it difficult for all the right whales in the area to hear each other most of the time, not just once in a while.”

The researchers suggest that this new knowledge can help adapt current management tools and be used as part of “comprehensive plans that seek to manage the cumulative effects of offshore human activities on marine species and their habitats.”

They are on to something. This call for collaborative, data-driven, practical management is at the heart of Regional Ocean Planning. A good regional ocean planning process can help us coordinate our activities while minimizing and mitigating conflicts among ocean users and protecting healthy ecosystems. It is the process that recently helped researchers in Stellwagen Bank better protect whales from vessel strikes by shipping traffic. And it’s a process that can help us unravel the ocean noise puzzle – and better protect our hearing marine life, while continuing to develop our maritime economy.

January 24 - Recent paper points to a need for improved ecosystem modeling - Fisheries managers in the U.S., and increasingly around the world, use stock assessments and scientific information about fish populations to set catch limits for fisheries. It is typically assumed that more adult fish means more reproduction, and thus more fish available for us to harvest. But the authors of a paper published last week by several prominent fisheries biologists found that the productivity of fish stocks can be nearly independent of the abundance of adults, and is influenced by other factors.

January 25 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, January 25 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the SSC sets 2013 Allowable Biological Catch for three stocks; John Bullard denies a request for interim measures; the New England shrimp season begins; the Marine Fisheries Institute will review the groundfish stock assessment process; concern over a loss of fisheries advocates in Congress; an investigation into fisheries rule making finds flaws in record keeping.

January 9 - The Bottom Line: A Better Way to Manage Fish - Some proposed fisheries rules would take us backward, with costly new delays and exemptions that could allow overfishing and reverse conservation gains. Other proposals offer an opportunity to improve the health of our oceans, by managing our fisheries as part of the larger ecosystem. This holistic approach — often called “ecosystem-based fisheries management” — looks beyond the health of individual species to also consider the food and habitat they rely upon.

January 10 - NOAA’s 2011 Groundfish Report by the Numbers - On December 26th, NOAA released its “2011 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2011-April 2012).” Overall, the report indicates that groundfish catch and net revenues are increasing steadily, although some stocks, most notably Georges Bank haddock, are fished at a level far below the annual catch limit. Consolidation and equity issues are still a major concern. Measures of fleet inequality generally improved from 2010 levels, and the decline in boat numbers has slowed noticeably following a sharp drop-off between 2009 and 2010. Here are some highlights of the data.

January 11 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, January 11 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, fishermen have caught less than half the 2012 catch limit on 14 out of 16 groundfish stocks; Maine lobster landings hit a record high; the House debates Sandy aid; Brian Rothschild calls biological reference points arbitrary; some fishing advocates support Barney Frank for interim MA senator.

Rules work better when we all understand them, but what happens when the rules overlap or conflict with one another? And, who is in charge of implementing all these rules anyhow? When it comes to the rules of the road we all learn the same common rules during the drivers’ education course. But, what happens when it comes to the rules which manage and protect our ocean and coasts?

Ocean and coastal resources are currently managed by more than 20 federal agencies and administered through a web of more than 140 different and often conflicting laws and regulations. We use our coasts and ocean for so many things – fishing, boating, swimming, tourism, shipping, renewable energy – and there are no easy guidelines about who is in charge at any given moment, in any given spot.

Fortunately, we are on our way to making this puzzle of governance a bit easier to solve.

The National Ocean Policy directs federal agencies to coordinate management activities, implement a science-based system of decision making, support safe and sustainable access and ocean uses, respect cultural practices and maritime heritage, and increase scientific understanding of ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems.

Improving the way in which federal and state agencies work with each other and the public is a distinct goal of the National Ocean Policy. To do this, the NOP presents a set of nine priority objectives for policies and management actions and establishes a new National Ocean Council (NOC), which will be responsible for developing strategic action plans for these priority objectives and leading coordination and collaboration between federal agencies.

A well coordinated group of agencies can better serve the people they are supposed to serve, create the jobs and economic benefits we all need, help us enjoy and safeguard our waters, beaches, and wildlife for our families and our future.