2023 Peer Review: Right Whale Decision Support Tool

Entanglement in fishing gear is a leading cause of serious injury and death among endangered North Atlantic right whales. The current plan for reducing entanglement risk affects fixed gear commercial fishing operations in U.S. Atlantic waters, particularly trap/pot gear used to harvest American lobster and Jonah crab and gillnets.

The right whale population is small. Seeing an entanglement event is rare, and we do not often identify or retrieve entangling gear from whales. As a result, it is not feasible to calculate an absolute measure of entanglement risk posed by different gear in different locations. Direct comparison of likely effectiveness between different risk reduction measures is also difficult.   

Reviewers will evaluate an updated method—called a decision support tool—developed to help us understand when and where North Atlantic right whales risk entanglement in different kinds of fixed fishing gear off the northeastern United States, and how effective various risk mitigation measures are likely to be. Its earliest version was peer reviewed in November 2019. That version considered only the distribution and configuration of Northeast lobster and Jonah crab gear. Since then, the DST has been updated to incorporate all of the fisheries regulated under the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan.

The peer review meeting is open to the public, and specific times for public comment are incorporated into the agenda. 

All times in the agenda are approximate, and may be changed at the discretion of the chair. 

Terms of Reference

In their final reports, the reviewers will review whether the tool:

• Incorporates the U.S. lobster, gillnet, and other trap/pot commercial fishery data sets necessary to determine fishing effort and distribution 
• Incorporates relevant estimates of right whale distribution and densities
• Uses appropriate entanglement risk coefficients by gear type
• Incorporates appropriate approaches to applying these coefficients to estimate relative risk (and risk uncertainty) of large whales encountering gear
• Provides appropriate estimates of risk reduction of large whales encountering gear, using the fishing effort and right whale density data reviewed under the first two bullets, above

Review Panel

The peer review is being coordinated by the Atlantic Scientific Review Group. Scientific Review Groups advise NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the status of marine mammal stocks under Section 117 of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The decision support tool peer review panel includes:

• Richard Merrick (chair), Atlantic Scientific Review Group
• Erin Summers, Maine Department of Marine Resources and Atlantic Scientific Review Group
• Tim Tinker, U.S. Geological Survey, Western Ecological Research Center
• Dewayne Fox, Delaware State University
• Rebecca Lewison, San Diego State University
• Genevieve Nesslage, University of Maryland

Meeting Presentations

Meeting presentations have been aggregated into a single file. You can access it here (PDF, 105 p). If prompted, request permission to access.