Last week, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) listed the Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whale, a large baleen whale, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The agency determined that the whale is endangered “due to its small population size and restricted range, and the threats of energy exploration, development and production, oil spills and oil spill response, vessel collision, fishing gear entanglement, and anthropogenic noise.” The agency cited studies showing that there are fewer than 100 Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whales left in the population.
The National Sea Grant Law Center, through the Sea Grant Law & Policy Journal, is partnering with the Urban Coast Institute at Monmouth University in New Jersey to publish papers from the institute’s Climate Change, Coasts & Communities Symposium. The New Jersey coast has been facing increased storm events, flooding, sea level rise, and coastal erosion, all of which will present daunting adaptation challenges in the future for the state. The symposium, which took place April 17-18, 2019, featured leading experts in climate change adaptation law and science to discuss lessons learned from other states and countries to assist New Jersey in navigating these challenges in the future.
Over the past several months, the state of Mississippi has been hit with severe rainfall, causing intense flooding, especially along the Mississippi Delta (Delta). Approximately 500,000 acres in the Delta are underwater, 200,000 of which is agricultural farmland. This rainfall has swelled the Mississippi River and its levees, including the Yazoo Backwater Levee, causing some to resurrect old discussions of the Yazoo Backwater Pumping Project.
On March 28, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Ross v. Acadian Seaplants (No. Was-17-142, 2019 ME 45, WL 1388499), holding that rockweed—a variety of brown algae that many in the state harvest for both personal and commercial use—is private property. As a result, rockweed harvesters must now gain permission from shorefront property owners before they can collect rockweed from the intertidal zone (the area of wet sand that falls between the high- and low-tide marks) in front of the owners’ property.
