Florida Sport Fishing Conservation

HOW IS THIS EFFECTING YOU ? AND WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ?

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:45:00 +0000

HOW IS THIS EFFECTING YOU ? AND WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ?

Another modification to the closed area
announced this morning.
NOAA is modifying the closed area to continue
...encompassing the past and projected path of both oil and sheen.
Specifically, we are: * Extending the northernmost closure boundary
eastward along the federal-state water line to just east of East Bay in
the Florida panhandle to capture oil outlined in the 72-hour trajectory
and reported to us by the state of Florida; * Extending the
southeastern closure boundary to the federal-state water line at the
Dry Tortugas, then southward along 83^o west longitude (line
demarcating jurisdictions of the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic
Fishery Management Councils) and westward along the southern boundary
of the U.S. EEZ to encompass a portion of noncontiguous sheen moving
toward the Keys; * Slightly extending the south-central boundary to
incorporate a small area outside the current boundary which data
indicate was impacted by the slick; and * Slightly
retracting the western closure boundary to open a small area inside the
current boundary which was closed based on trajectory data but was not
impacted by the oil.The new closure map and accompanying information
are attached and posted on to our Southeast Regional Office website at http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov.This/ new
closure area measures 88,522 sq mi (229,270 sq km), or about 37% of the GOM
EEZ, compared to yesterday's closure area. The new closure area will become
effective at 6 PM Eastern Time tonight.

Federal Fisheries Closure

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:34:00 +0000

Deepwater Horizon/BP Oil Spill: Federal Fisheries Closure and Other Information

Current Closed Area

Tuesday, June 1, 2010: An updated closure is effective beginning 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time (5:00 p.m. Central Time) – see map below
Updates will be posted daily by 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time (11:00 a.m. Central Time)

* Map of Fishery Closure Boundary effective at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time on June 1, 2010
o Low Resolution Map (png)
o Shapefile

* Fishery Bulletin FB10-049 BP Oil Spill: NOAA Modifies Commercial and Recreational Fishing Closure in the Oil-Affected Portions of the Gulf of Mexico

* How can I learn about changes to the closed area?
o Click on the map above to see the current coordinates
o Sign up to receive Southeast Fishery Bulletins by email at SERO.Communications.Comments@">noaa.gov
o Call 1-800-627-NOAA (1-800-627-6622) to hear a recording of the currentERO.Communications.Comments@noaa.gov coordinates
o Listen to NOAA Weather Radio for messages about the closure
o Receive text messages on your cell phone about changes to the closed area by texting fishing@gulf to 84469 (visit http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/558107 for more information)
o Follow us on Twitter: usnoaagov to get a tweet when the closed area changes

Current News

* Size and Percent Coverage of Fishing Area Closures Due to BP Oil Spill
* Fishery Bulletin FB10-034: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: NOAA Publishes a Rule to Expedite the Closing and Opening of Areas in the Oil-Affected Portions of the Gulf of Mexico
* Emergency Rule May 11, 2010
* Environmental Assessment
* Letter to Interested Parties
* NOAA information and updates on the Deepwater Horizon Incident, Gulf of Mexico

Frequently Asked Questions

* BP Claims Information Frequently Asked Questions

Fisheries

* Fish Stocks in the Gulf of Mexico (pdf)
* Seafood Safety (pdf)
* Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill General Fact Sheet (pdf)

Protected Resources and Habitat

* Marine Mammals and Turtles (pdf)
* Response and Rescue Plans for Marine Mammals and Sea Turtles Impacted by the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico (pdf)
* Oil and Coral (pdf)
* Shorelines and Coastal Habitats (pdf)
* Information on Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Strandings

General Information

* Boom Fact Sheet (pdf)
* Tarballs Fact Sheet (pdf)
* Hurricanes and the Oil Spill (pdf)
* Deepwater Horizon Oil: Characteristics and Concerns (pdf)

For More Information

Archives (including maps and other information about previous closures)

Important Links

Contacts

new gulf fishing closure

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:14:00 +0000

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:
Sustainable Fisheries Division May 28, 2010
727-824-5305, FAX 727-824-5308 FB10-047
BP Oil Spill: NOAA Modifies Commercial and Recreational Fishing Closure in the
Oil-Affected Portions of the Gulf of Mexico
Current revisions to the closure, described below, will be effective on May 28, 2010 at 6 p.m. eastern time (5 p.m. central time). All commercial and recreational fishing including catch and release is prohibited in the closed area; however, transit through the area is allowed.
Map Link:
http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/sf/deepwater_horizon/BP_OilSpill_FisheryClosureMap_052810.pdf
The closure is 60,683 sq mi (157,169 sq km), which is about 25% of the Gulf of Mexico exclusive economic zone. The majority of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico are open to commercial and recreational fishing.
Modeling and mapping the actual and projected spill area is not an exact science. NOAA Fisheries Service strongly advises fishermen not to fish in areas where oil or oil sheens (very thin layers of floating oil) are present, even if those areas are not currently closed to fishing.
Permit holders are reminded to maintain their federal vessel permits by submitting timely reporting requirements and renewal applications, even if the vessel is not currently engaged in fishing activities.
This revised closed area is bounded by rhumb lines connecting, in order, the following coordinates:
North latitude
West longitude
30o 01′
At state/federal line
29 o 50′
88 o 14′
29 o 50′
87 o 28′
29 o 27′
86 o 31′
28 o 48′
87 o 00′
27 o 55′
84 o 46′
25 o 42′
84o 23′
25 o 13′
At outer federal line
Follow the outer boundary of federal waters northerly to…
The outer federal line
86 o 16′
26 o 48′
86 o 20′
27 o 35′
88 o 14′
27 o 35′
91 o 20′20″
At the state/federal line
91 o 20′20″
Follow the state/federal water line easterly to beginning point
Ways To Receive Closure Information: Southeast Fishery Bulletins: to sign up send an email to: SERO.Communications.Comments@noaa.gov Call 1-800-627-NOAA (1-800-627-6622) to hear a recording of the current coordinates Listen to NOAA Weather Radio for updates Text messages on your cell phone: to sign up text fishing@gulf to 84469 (for more information visit http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/558107) Follow us on Twitter: usnoaagov to get a tweet when the closed area changes
Links for more information:
Southeast Regional Office’s Web page:
http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/deepwater_horizon_oil_spill.htm
NOAA’s National Ocean Service
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov
Deepwater Horizon Response http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com
Fishermen who wish to contact BP about a claim should call 1-800-440-0858.
Southeast Fishery Bulletin
National Marine Fisheries Service, Southeast Regional Office, 263 13th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701

Florida Loop current threat over ?

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Loop current threat over

Oil from the massive spill is unlikely to reach Florida through the Loop Current, a powerful Gulf of Mexico flow that runs past the Florida Keys and up the Atlantic Seaboard, Lubchenco testified.

"We continue to track the small amount of oil that was entrained in the Loop Current late last week," she said. "Most of that surface oil is now caught in a counter-clockwise eddy on the northern side of the Loop Current. And because the top of the Loop Current has now pinched off, any oil that was in the Loop Current will most likely be retained in the Gulf and not routed to the Florida straight or the Gulf current."

Experts had worried that the current could bring oil into the Florida Keys and pose an environmental hazard, especially for coral reefs. But scientists last week said a large rotating cyclone of cold water was pushing into the southern body of the Loop Current and appeared likely to destabilize or even sever the current and the oil it contains from its connection to Florida

this is very hard for me to believe with all this oil in the Gulf now the officials have the gull to clam the treat is over !! keep up the voice the gulf and its Sea life will need our yelp for a long long time !!

Don’t dam salmon to extinction

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Thu, 20 May 2010 03:01:00 +0000

Don’t dam salmon to extinction

Posted using ShareThis

The first heavy oil hits Louisiana marshlands

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:15:00 +0000

VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) – The first heavy oil from a giant Gulf of Mexico spill sloshed ashore in fragile Louisiana marshlands on Wednesday and part of the mess entered a powerful current that could carry it to Florida and beyond.

The developments underscored the gravity of the situation as British energy giant BP Plc raced to capture more crude gushing from a ruptured well a mile beneath the surface. The spill is threatening an ecological and economic disaster along the U.S. Gulf Coast and beyond.

"This wasn't tar balls. This wasn't sheen," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said after a boat tour to the southernmost point of the Mississippi River estuary. "This is heavy oil in our wetlands."

The marshes are the nurseries for shrimp, oysters, crabs and fish that make Louisiana the leading producer of commercial seafood in the continental United States and a top destination for recreational anglers. The United States has already imposed a large no-fishing zone in waters in the Gulf seen affected by the spill.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government's top weather forecaster said a "small portion" of light sheen from the giant oil slick has already entered the Loop Current, which could carry the oil down to the Florida Keys, to Cuba and even up the U.S. East Coast.

BP, its reputation on the line in an environmental disaster that could eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, has marked some progress at siphoning some of the oil from the well, which ruptured after an April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers.

BP said it is now siphoning about 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons/477,000 liters) a day of oil, out of what the company estimated was a 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) a day gusher. And BP could begin injecting mud into the well as early as Sunday in a bid to permanently plug the leak.

The closed area has once again been expanded

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:53:00 +0000

NOAA Fisheries Constituent and Stakeholders - We have posted a
modification to the closure area on our Southeast Regional office
website at. http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/ Attached is a map of the new
closure area.

Briefly, NOAA Fisheries is expanding the western, southwestern and
southeastern boundaries of the closure to encompass most of the reported
actual location and projected path of the oil based on initialization
data and the 48-hour trajectory. Specifically:

* NOAA Fisheries is extending the western and southwestern
boundaries slightly to the south to capture oil reported outside
the current boundary.

* We are extending the southeastern boundary by about 60 miles to
encompass the full extent of the main slick. We are not
attempting to capture a smaller, isolated mass located farther to
the southeast. We determined it is not practical to incorporate
such masses into the closure because we expect them to move
quickly and erratically and to frequently change in size and
dimension.

The closure measures 24,241 sq mi (62,784 sq km), which is about 10% of
the GOM EEZ as compared to the May 14th closure comprising 19,377 sq.
mil (8% of the GOM Federal waters).

BP said Monday it was siphoning more than one-fifth of the oil

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:19:00 +0000

EW ORLEANS – BP said Monday it was siphoning more than one-fifth of the oil that has been spewing into the Gulf for almost a month, as worries escalated that the ooze may reach a major ocean current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and up the East Coast.

BP PLC chief operating officer Doug Suttles said Monday on NBC's "Today" that a mile-long tube was funneling a little more than 1,000 barrels — 42,000 gallons — of crude a day from a blown well into a tanker ship. The company and the U.S. Coast Guard have estimated about 5,000 barrels — 210,000 gallons — have been spewing out each day. Engineers finally got the contraption working on Sunday after weeks of failed solutions — however, millions of gallons of oil are already in the Gulf of Mexico.

Crews will slowly ramp up how much oil the tube collects over the next few days. They need to move slowly because they don't want too much frigid seawater entering the pipe, which could combine with gases to form the same ice-like crystals that doomed the previous containment effort.

As engineers worked to get a better handle on the spill, a researcher told The Associated Press that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into a powerful water stream known as the loop current, which could propel it into the Atlantic Ocean. A boat is being sent later this week to collect samples and learn more.

"This can't be passed off as 'it's not going to be a problem,'" said William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science. "This is a very sensitive area. We are concerned with what happens in the Florida Keys."

oil tube seems to be helping

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:04:00 +0000

BP: Mile-long tube sucking oil away from Gulf well - Yahoo! News

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100517/ap_o...

Oil company engineers on Sunday finally succeeded in keeping some of the oil gushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico, hooking up a mile-long tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship after more than three weeks of failures.

NOAA Ocean Science Mission Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:18:00 +0000

NOAA Ocean Science Mission Changes Course to Collect Seafloor and Water Column Oil Spill Data

A NOAA-sponsored ocean mission, set to explore for deep sea corals, has been redirected to collect seafloor and water column data from areas near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill source.

Researchers from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology (NIUST) on a university research ship to obtain core sediment samples from the seafloor and water samples from the water column in areas near the Deepwater Horizon spill source. The samples are expected to provide important information about the abundance of marine organisms and the presence of chemicals in ocean water and sediments--information for a baseline against which to measure change if those areas are affected by sinking oil.

The university fleet research vessel Pelican, operated by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, departed Cocodrie, La., late Tuesday and arrived at the spill source on Wednesday. They will return on Sunday for more supplies, and go back to the site later that week.

The ship had been outfitted and ready to support a different NOAA-funded mission, but it was scrubbed in favor of gathering timely and much-needed data close to the oil spill source.

“This sampling mission is one of many NOAA responses to the oil spill,” acting NOAA assistant administrator for NOAA Research Craig McLean said. “It fills an important gap in researching the interaction of spilled oil and the ocean environment. The samples will help us better understand affected ocean resources.”

“We plan to sample as close to the well head as is safe, reasonable and allowable,” said Ray Highsmith, executive director for NIUST and principal investigator for both the original and revised mission. “We then plan to travel northwestward toward our long-term study site.”

That study site is about nine miles from the oil spill source and the home of the Gulf of Mexico Consortium’s Methane Hydrate Seafloor Observatory. In the seven years of the observatory’s development, scientists have collected a wealth of geologic, physical, chemical, and biological data describing the area—data that could be important in measuring changes there that stem from the oil spill.

With NOAA’s agreement to change missions, scientists and technicians on the ship and ashore worked quickly to adjust staffing and resources.

The research team brought aboard a large box corer used to take seafloor sediment samples and installed a large reel of cable to allow the corer to operate at depths equal to the spill source at 5,000 feet. An instrument called a CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth) will measure the water’s conductivity, temperature, density and oxygen concentration at various water column depths, while bottles on the CTD obtain water samples.

Before the ship departed, Chief Scientist Arne Diercks and scientists and crewmembers received Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response training as required by OSHA for those involved in the clean-up of hazardous substances. Oil is considered a hazardous substance.

Based at the University of Mississippi in Oxford and the University of Southern Mississippi at the Stennis Space Center, NIUST is a partnership of the University of Mississippi, University of Southern Mississippi and NOAA, funded by NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. Samples from the mission will be studied by NOAA and by labs at the universities of Georgia and North Carolina and others that are members of the Gulf of Mexico Hydrates Research Consortium.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources. Visit us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/usnoaagov.

USCG proposes to amend rules to numbering of undocumented vessels

The Coast Guard proposes to amend its rules related to numbering of undocumented vessels and reporting of casualties. These

changes would align and modernize terminology used in the Standard Numbering System (SNS), the Vessel Identification System (VIS), and casualty reporting; require validation of vessel hull identification numbers; require SNS vessel owners to provide personally identifiable information; and provide administrative flexibility for States. Together, the proposed changes would improve recreational boating safety efforts, enhance law enforcement capabilities, advance maritime security, and clarify requirements for all stakeholders.

DATES: Comments and related material must either be submitted to our online docket via http://www.regulations.gov on or before August 5, 2010 or reach the Docket Management Facility by that date. Comments sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on collection of information must reach OMB on or before August 5, 2010.

Amateur Video Of Gulf Oil Slick -Worse Than BP Admits

noreply@blogger.com (Tails And Scales Charters) — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:29:00 +0000