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.

One of the fundamental concepts of marine ecology and modern fisheries management is that fish and other ocean wildlife need various types of habitat to feed, grow, and reproduce. Healthy ocean habitat is crucial to the well-being of ocean ecosystems and also provides spawning grounds for commercially important groundfish. New England’s ocean waters are home to several special places that deserve permanent protection.

Cashes Ledge, an underwater mountain range 80 miles off the coast of Maine, supports the largest and deepest kelp forest off the Northeastern United States and is home to an enormous diversity of ocean wildlife – from whales, Atlantic wolffish, and blue sharks, to fields of anemones and sponges. This kelp forest provides an important source of food and habitat for a vast array of ocean wildlife. Other places such as Jeffreys Ledge and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provide rich habitat for highly depleted cod and haddock, sea turtles, and four species of whales.

Most of these three areas in the Gulf of Maine currently benefit from fishing regulations which prohibit harmful bottom trawling, but these protections are temporary. Some of the largest commercial fishing trawlers in the region are pushing for changes in regulations to allow bottom trawling in Cashes Ledge, Jeffreys Ledge and the only protected portion of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

After the last cod crisis in the 1990s the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC), after a court decree spurred by a CLF legal action, designated Cashes Ledge and an area known as the “Western Gulf of Maine” which holds Jeffreys Ledge and 22% of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, as “mortality closures.” The action restricted destructive trawling, but it allowed a wide array of other commercial fishing gear such as bottom gillnets, purse seines, hook and line and more the questionable practice of “mid-water trawls,” which despite their name, often catch groundfish. Recreational fishing and charter boats were not restricted.

This single protective measure restricting commercial bottom trawling helped to restore seriously depleted populations in these areas. Moreover, protecting areas like Cashes Ledge created the “spillover effect” where larger populations of fish migrate out of the boundaries of the protected area. This is why commercial fishing vessels often “fish the borders” of protected areas.

After a new stock assessment released one year ago showed that populations of cod, haddock and other groundfish were at all time lows, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under pressure from some of the largest trawlers in the New England fleet started to hint that allowing bottom trawling in previously protected habitat areas – places like Cashes Ledge – might help to increase falling harvest amounts. At a time of the lowest recorded groundfish populations in history, how does it make sense to increase trawling in the best, remaining habitat areas?

This is why we must urge NOAA to keep our habitat protections in place.

Cashes Ledge is important not only to fish and ocean wildlife but also to scientists hoping to learn about the health and function of New England’s oceans. Many scientists believe that Cashes Ledge represents the best remaining example of an undisturbed Gulf of Maine ecosystem and have used Cashes Ledge as an underwater laboratory to which they have compared more degraded habitat in the Gulf of Maine.

The basic fact is that opening scarce protected habitat in the Gulf of Maine to bottom trawling at a time of historically low groundfish populations is among the worst ideas for recovering fish populations and the industry which depend upon them. But fisheries politics in New England remain. On Dec. 20^th the NEFMC may take action through a backdoor exemption process to allow bottom trawling in a large portion of Cashes Ledge and other areas. NOAA needs to keep current protections in place. CLF is committed to securing permanent protection to ensure the long-term health of this important and vulnerable ecosystem. Click here to urge NOAA to protect New England ocean habitat and help ensure a healthy future for New England’s ocean.

CLF recently teamed up with Green Fire Productions to organize premiers of the new documentary Ocean Frontiers: The Dawn of a New Era in Ocean Stewardship in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The film is an inspiring voyage to seaports and watersheds across the country. The audience was given a chance to meet industrial shippers and whale biologists, pig farmers and wetland ecologists, commercial and sport fishermen and reef snorkelers—all of them embarking on a new course of cooperation to sustain the sea and our coastal and ocean economies.

CLF organized the events to raise awareness about the need for new approaches to solving the problems facing our ocean, and to highlight the success of cutting-edge ocean planning initiatives that CLF has backed in Rhode Island (the Ocean Special Areas Management Plan or SAMP) and Massachusetts (the Massachusetts Ocean Plan). CLF’s Tricia Jedele and Priscilla Brooks participated in a panel of experts following each screening, hilighting the critical work that CLF has done over the years to advance successful ocean planning initiatives in New England, and making the case for how these initiatives could serve as a national model.

The Massachusetts event was held in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and drew over 300 people to the New England Aquarium’s IMAX theater. In Rhode Island, our premier was sponsored by over 15 environmental organizations, businesses and academic institution and the entire congressional delegation served as honorary co-hosts. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a nationally recognized ocean champion joined the over 150 people in attendance at the University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus and gave a rousing introduction to the film calling on attendees to learn and take action to protect this critical resource.

Yet despite the success stories outlined in the film, big industries that profit off of the dysfunctional status quo, most notably the oil industry, are beginning to ramp up efforts in congress to block the National Ocean Policy and other efforts to improve ocean management.

Following the film, attendees took action by signing on to CLF’s petition in support of ocean planning. To add your voice to the growing chorus demanding new, collaborative and science based approaches to ocean planning click here to visit our action page.

On Wednesday, September 14, Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary presented a groundbreaking proposal to establish a dedicated ecological research area within the Sanctuary’s boundaries to study the area’s diverse ecosystem. Although the Sanctuary’s multi-stakeholder Advisory Council voted strongly in favor of the proposal, NOAA officials decided not to send the proposal on to the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) for further review.

A NOAA diver studies anemones and other marine live covering a wreck in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (Photo credit: Matthew Lawrence, NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary).

Yesterday, Priscilla Brooks, Ph.D., director of CLF’s Ocean Conservation program, said, “The proposal by the Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary staff to establish a Sanctuary Ecological Research Area is a bold step forward in the Sanctuary’s stewardship of this national treasure. This incredibly rich ecosystem and the close location of the Sanctuary to New England’s world-renowned marine science research institutions and ports makes Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary an excellent choice for a dedicated research area where scientists can study and learn more about New England’s greatest natural resource – our ocean.

Given the public release of this proposal and the support of Sanctuary Advisory Council, we are baffled that NOAA would then decide not to move the proposal forward to the New England Fishery Management Council for further public and stakeholder consideration and a final decision on the proposal. NOAA’s erratic decision is confusing and disappointing to citizens and scientists who have long supported the Sanctuary’s efforts and indicates an inexplicable willingness by NOAA to put the scientific management and stewardship of Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary on the back burner.

We applaud the very good effort by the staff at the Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary. NOAA now needs to move the proposal forward and submit it for review by the Fishery Management Council.”

To read the full statement, click here.

Fun fact: Great white sharks (or white sharks, as scientists prefer) are migratory.

(Photo credit: kqedquest, flickr)

Scientists are just beginning to learn how far ranging an individual shark can be, and they are still puzzling over what motivates them to travel. In Devil’s Teeth, Susan Casey’s fascinating book about white sharks off the Farallon Islands near San Francisco, she describes some of their wanderings. The sharks completely disappear for several months, then return, thin and hungry, to fatten up on local seal and sea lion populations. Some of the Farallon sharks have been tracked to an area off the Pacific coast of Mexico.

What are they doing down there? Nobody knows, but researchers are working hard to find out.  Elsewhere in the book, Casey gives an account of orcas killing and eating one of the sharks. Almost immediately after the killing, dozens of other sharks fled the area. Researchers had been observing them daily, and were very surprised when they all disappeared. One of the sharks had a radio tag on; he turned up in Hawaii.

Our “local” white sharks migrate as well. Like many New Englanders, they head south when the temperature drops, and have been found off the southeast coastal states, and in the Gulf of Mexico.

There is a lot we don’t know about white sharks. But we do know that their numbers are declining throughout the world’s ocean. The average size of the animals is shrinking as well.

This is not good news. Sharks are an important part of a healthy, functioning ocean ecosystem. As we learn more about these mysterious animals, we will need flexible, ecosystem-based management strategies to ensure their survival.

Coastal Marine Spatial Planning (CMSP) is one tool that can help. It is a strategy that is paying off for the endangered North Atlantic right whales. There are very few of these animals left, but they are showing signs of recovery. Recently, shipping lanes were re-routed in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary to avoid right whale feeding grounds, allowing for fewer whale/boat collisions. This is just one example of how a strong National Ocean Policy can help provide creative solutions for species conservation.