The beauty, health, and wealth provided by the productivity of New England’s ocean is illustrated in the diversity of ocean and coastal habitat found in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, southern New England waters, and the far edge of the Outer Continental Shelf. New England’s ocean habitats provide a huge economic service, but only if the underlying ecological foundation is healthy and sustained. Pushing our ocean waters to produce more fish and seafood than is sustainable can lead to a severe decline in goods and services – as we are seeing with the most recent groundfish depletion crisis – or even to an unrecoverable collapse as has happened in eastern Canada.

There are really two major components to a healthy ocean: don’t take out too much in the way of fish and other living resources and don’t put in too much in the way of runoff, nutrients, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants. In New England’s celebrated cod and groundfish fishery we have clearly been taking out too much through decades of overfishing. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), at the request of the New England Fishery Management Council, has for years taken the riskiest possible approach to managing fish stocks. NOAA and the Fishery Management Council have set catch limits at the highest levels allowed by law and then shown great surprise when fish stocks fail to recover.

We need NOAA to show proactive leadership by ensuring a more precautionary approach to setting annual catch limits and to rebuilding fish populations. Decades of unsustainable catch levels should not continue to plague New England’s fisheries or our ocean’s health.

The other problem of overfishing is that the methods used to catch fish have gotten more destructive. Since the development of more powerful engines and sonar during World War II, fishing vessels can go farther out to sea, fish in deeper water, and drag heavier bottom trawls. These inventions not only catch a lot more fish, but also cause more damage to ocean bottom habitat – the kelp beds, boulders and rocky fields, tube worms, anemones, sponges, corals, and mussel beds which serve as nurseries and spawning areas. Over decades we are left with cumulative impacts to large areas of New England’s ocean habitat.

This makes the remaining special areas such as Cashes Ledge even more important as a place where small fish can grow and become large enough to reproduce.

In New England, NOAA is headed in reverse on its legal responsibility and the ecological necessity to further protect juvenile groundfish in their nursery grounds. The commercial fishing industry, led by big trawlers, has argued for opening these nursery grounds. Areas of sea bottom that provide essential fish habitat must be protected from destructive fishing practices like trawling and dredging.  For nearly a decade regional fishery managers have failed to take serious action to protect essential fish habitat.  It’s time to make habitat conservation a priority.

The Conservation Law Foundation, our conservation partners, marine scientists, fishermen, and ocean users agree that permanent habitat protection is needed for Cashes Ledge and other special places.

Join our statement to NOAA asking for their leadership. Click here to urge NOAA to protect our ocean beauty, health, and wealth.

Here they are! Some of Brian’s first ever pictures of Cashes Ledge. Every picture tells a story – but we are lucky enough to have some real stories to tell about these awesome pictures. We caught up with Brian shortly after he visited Cashes Ledge and asked him about the dive. Brian filled us in on some of the exciting details of this bona fide ocean odyssey:

Robin: You’ve never dived Cashes Ledge before, what were your first impressions?

Brian: As always when I am diving in a new place for the first time, all I see is chaos when I first get on the bottom, but over time I begin to zero in on specific behaviors to start making order and begin to put the puzzle together.

The kelp is beautiful, the stalks are 6-8 feet high, then they have fronds that lay horizontally for probably 10-15 more feet. They create this sea of kelp, literally a bed of kelp that you see when you first come down from the surface that looks like the bottom but isn’t. The descent line we sent down just disappeared through it. You’d follow it down to the kelp bed then you’d have to go another 6 or 8 feet to get to the bottom. It’s a false bottom of kelp fronds. It’s a lovely golden amber color, and there’s another species of kelp that’s sort of reddish, growing on the amber ones. It all looked good and lush and thick – very colorful and healthy looking.

There were lots of fish circling around. We saw quite a few red cod. There are a lot of pollock and quite a number of cod mixed in, and some of the cod are more traditionally colored, but some have the distinctive red/orange iridescent coloration.

Robin: What other kinds of wildlife did you see?

Brian: Besides pollock and cod, there were a lot of juvenile fish. We found out later they were cunner. They are bright orange when they are small, quite stunning, like the garibaldi in California. We saw quite a few whales on the surface, minke whales porpoising and coming up for air, but not close enough to photograph. There were invertebrates on the bottom, on ledges below the kelp. It’s definitely worth a lot more exploration. This is clearly a unique habitat.

Robin: Was this dive different from your expectations?

Brian: I’d heard about the Cashes Ledge kelp forest for years. People always say it’s not like California, so I expected an area that was covered in kelp on the bottom, but the brown kind that I usually see inshore, just a lot more of it – low-lying, a foot off the bottom. I didn’t expect anything like this. Stalks of kelp that were 8 feet high and long strands at the top that made this golden bed. It was very unique. The fish stayed localized, always in the area. They weren’t passing schools; they sort of hung out there. The kelp forest is probably a square mile or so – it’s a big area. But the fish were always there – in the background, silhouetted. It was very different from what I expected.

Robin: Did you see evidence of human activity in the area?

Brian: There was a tremendous amount of fishing gear out there. We tried to dive away from gear. But everybody on the trip remarked that there were a lot of fishing buoys on the surface. I think they were lobster traps, but I’m not sure. They were everywhere. This was surprising. Nobody expected this. A friend of mine remembers diving Cashes in the 80s, and said the fish used to be so thick that you couldn’t see your dive buddies. It’s not like that today, so the biomass must be down. But there was a good population of fish. I think a place like this with proper protection could come back to those levels that my friend observed 20-30 years ago.

Robin: Were there any unexpected difficulties?

Brian: No, but the currents got quite strong on Sunday and we had trouble getting to the dive-line buoy. Wearing a dry suit and 120 pounds of equipment you have to swim really hard against the current. We couldn’t get to the buoy, so the boat picked us up and we tried again and made it.

Robin: What was the water temperature?

Brian: Pretty warm for New England, probably 50 degrees.

Robin: Did the weather cause any problems?

Brian: No, the weather was really good. It progressively improved. Early Saturday it was fine, small waves, a little bumpy, but it got better and by Sunday was really calm. If the waves are big it’s hard to get back in the boat after the dive.

Robin: Was visibility low from the recent northeaster?

Brian: I don’t know why visibility was low. It was very typical of New England conditions. Turbid, but not terrible. Visibility was 20-25 feet, but hazy, not crystal clear. I tried to work close in and make some pictures that would still come out well.

Robin: Will you do anything differently next time you go to Cashes?

Brian: Not necessarily. I would like to have more time. To produce pictures in these conditions takes a lot of repeatability and serendipity. My M.O. is to dive a place over and over and keep working it, if I can. I could spend hours and hours working those fish. I’m very intrigued by the red cod. They are highly unique and beautiful with the golden kelp backdrop and green water. I would just like to do more of it.

Are you intrigued by the red cod, too? We will give you a look at those fascinating fish soon. In the meantime, enjoy some of these other sublime pictures Brian made in this vibrant special place in the Gulf of Maine!

This post was originally published on New England Ocean Odyssey.

Breaching North Atlantic right whale. Copyright Brian Skerry.

On the occasion of World Oceans Day, it is worth reminding ourselves about how utterly dependent we are on the ocean – for the fish and shellfish that grace our dinner tables, for our summer recreation – on, in, and alongside our ocean – for the tremendous untapped renewable resources of the wind, waves and tides, and for transportation of people and goods. Oh yes, and the air – up to 70% of the oxygen we breathe is produced by the plankton in the ocean. That’s more than from all the world’s rain forests combined. The ocean absorbs about half of our carbon dioxide emissions and over 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases. The ocean covers 70% of our planet and regulates the earth’s climate. Unfortunately the ocean is facing a host of troubles from climate change and acidification caused by all that carbon dioxide absorption, not to mention overfishing, seafloor habitat destruction and pollution – we need to be better stewards of this incredible resource.

As I walked on Crane Beach last weekend thinking about all of this, an early summer Northeaster whipped the ocean into a froth and unusually high tides threw up a wrack line of seaweed reaching as far as the wind sculpted sand dunes – leaving just a sliver of a beach. I was reminded that the ocean truly is the master and commander, and once again I felt humbled by the sea’s strength and beauty. I was also a little frustrated by it. Why? Brian Skerry, weather permitting, will go on his first ever dive to one of New England’s most special places – Cashes Ledge –  this Saturday and Sunday.

Cashes Ledge, located 80 miles northeast of Gloucester, Massachusetts, is a 25-mile long underwater mountain chain that hosts one of the most unique, dynamic and ecologically productive areas in the Gulf of Maine. The highest peak, Ammen Rock, rises steeply off the ocean floor from 460 feet below to within 40 feet of the ocean’s surface.  There is an unbelievable diversity of ocean wildlife in this special place: North Atlantic right whales, blue sharks, bluefin tuna, herring, cod, Atlantic wolffish, sea anemones, brittle stars, brilliantly colored sea sponges, and the deepest kelp forest in the Gulf of Maine. But most of us have never seen this underwater jewel and probably never will. Unless, that is, someone goes diving and brings back spectacular photographs.

Brian’s planned dive on Cashes is just one of the many that he will be doing as part of the New England Ocean Odyssey – our 5 year partnership to bring to light the magnificent beauty that lies beneath the surface of New England’s waves. Despite all that we know about the ocean and its role in our lives, it still holds tremendous mystery. And I am happy for some mystery in these days of ceaseless information flow coming over our personal transoms 24/7 through our computers and smart phones. There is still so much we don’t know about the ocean and so much we can’t see. So gazing out to sea on that cold windy day, I wondered about what lies beneath the surface of those wild waves. My curiosity will soon be bated – at least for one special place in the Gulf of Maine.

With any luck Brian will show us just what a magnificent place Cashes Ledge is. I say with any luck, because, well, the weather has been challenging as of late. I have been electronically tethered to the Cashes Ledge weather buoy – a remarkable device that sends hourly reports on the wind, waves, water and air temperature, atmospheric pressure – hoping it brings us good news!

At the height of this week’s Northeaster sustained wind speeds at the buoy reached 25 knots with gusts up to 35 knots. And the waves reached nearly 14 feet.  Not good for diving!  But the weather seems to be moderating and we are hopeful that Brian and his dive crew will make it out to Cashes this weekend. If not this weekend, he’ll get out on another. And I can’t wait to share his photographs with you!  So today, on World Oceans Day, make sure you take the opportunity to thank our oceans for the mystery they still hold and for all that they do for each of us.

This is also published on New England Ocean Odyssey, which can be found here.