Science

The NOAA Fisheries Service Northeast Cooperative Research Program has launched a new webpage.

Access the new page by clicking here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

STONY BROOK, NY – January 10, 2012 – Fish parents can pre-condition their offspring to grow fastest at the temperature they experienced, according to research published in the February 2012 edition of Ecology Letters. This pre-conditioning, known as transgenerational plasticity (TGP), occurs whenever environmental cues experienced by either parent prior to fertilization changes how their offspring respond to the environment.

Dr. Stephan B. Munch, an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University and a member of the Early Life History Team at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), along with Santiago Salinas, a Ph.D. candidate from Stony Brook University, found what they believe to be the first evidence for thermal TGP in a vertebrate.



Munch and Salinas highlight TGP as another potential mechanism for rapid responses to climate shifts. “In light of global climate change, transgenerational effects of temperature may be incredibly important mechanisms for coping with altered thermal regimes,” said Dr. Munch.

In the experiment, the team collected several hundred adult sheepshead minnows from the Gulf Islands National Seashore in Gulf Breeze, Florida, and brought them to the fish facility at Stony Brook University in August 2009. To test for thermal TGP in growth, parents were held at several different temperatures and growth of their offspring was subsequently measured. After seven days of parental temperature exposure, offspring growth was the same for all parents. However, after 30-days of temperature exposure, offspring grew best at their parents’ temperature. The experiment was fully replicated and repeated, each time revealing the same result that offspring from high (34° Celsius) and low (24° Celsius) temperature parents grew best at high and low temperatures, respectively. “The differences in growth of the offspring, based on whether the parents had experienced that same temperature, were significant,” noted Salinas.

Read the complete story in News Wise

 

 

 

 

 

The Federal Funding Opportunity has been announced for the NOAA Sea Grant Aquaculture Research Program 2012.  For more information including a synopsis, the full announcement, and the application, go to Grants.gov and perform a basic search using Funding Opportunity Number NOAA-OAR-SG-2012-2003249 or CDMA Number 11.417.  This likely will be NOAA's only aquaculture-specific competition for fiscal year 2012.

This is a two-stage competition, with preproposals and full proposals.  Each has specific guidance and deadlines, stated in the announcement.  As stated in the announcement, applicants must submit a preproposal in order to be eligible to submit a full proposals.  Please pay careful attention to the instructions and contact your state Sea Grant Program as soon as possible to discuss proposals.
 
Dates: The deadline for receipt of preproposals via electronic mail at the National Sea Grant Office is 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on February 7, 2012.

Please see the announcement for full details.

Funding Opportunity Description: Depending on the availability of funds, NOAA expects to have approximately $3,200,000 available for a national competition to fund marine aquaculture research projects for FY 2012. This is part of the overall plan to support the development of environmentally and economically sustainable ocean, coastal, or Great Lakes aquaculture. Aquaculture that occurs in the Great Lakes or its coastal zone is considered marine aquaculture for this competition. Priorities for this FY 2012 competition include: Research to inform specific regulatory decisions; Research that supports multi-use spatial planning; and Socio-economic research targeted to understand aquaculture in a larger context. Proposals must be able to express how the proposed work will have a high probability of significantly advancing U.S. marine aquaculture development in the short-term (1-2 years) or medium-term (3-5 years).

Read the full announcement

 

 

 

 

 

According to the study, Friend of the Sea Absolute Performance Score was better than all major sustainable aquaculture schemes operating at international level: Global GAP, Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA), AquaGAP and also better than some bio standards such as Bio Suisse, Australia Certified Organic, and retailer standards such as Whole Foods Market and Marks & Spencer.

The study also concluded that Friend of the Sea’s standards are driving more change than Naturland, Bio Suisse, GAA, Label Rouge and Marks & Spencer. When all standards where compared according to their requirements for salmon aquaculture, Friend of the Sea scored second only to the bio Soil Association standard.

Dr Paolo Bray, director of Friend of the Sea explains: “Some Bio standards are more restrictive on animal welfare and nutritional aspects but as a consequence they might increase environmental impact and prevent achievement of sustainability.

“While it is clear that 'Bio' is not a valid alternative to 'sustainability', we are proud that our standard has often scored better than most of the major Bio standards. In particular salmon standards, according to this study, perform even better than Naturland”, Mr. Bray added.

“This is once more evidence of the reliability of Friend of the Sea standards. The international aquaculture industry has already appreciated the important added value provided by FOS certification as we have certified almost five times the amount of aquaculture production certified by all the bio standards worldwide”, Mr Bray concluded.

The study was released by the University of Victoria Seafood Ecology Research Group and it assessed 20 aquaculture certification standards. Only 18 of them have actually already been used during audits (the U.S. National Organic Standard and WWF's SAD – Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue are only drafts proposal at the time of the study) and some of them are only specific for one species or implemented only at a single nation level. 

Read the full story at FIS.

 

BALTIMORE—Researchers say they may have overcome a roadblock in efforts to satisfy the world's growing demand for seafood through fish-farming.

While more fish are being farmed, taking pressure off wild stocks, environmentalists and fisheries experts are concerned that expanding current fish-farming methods will not be sustainable for many species because that would require more smaller fish to be caught for feed. And that can affect stocks of larger wild fish higher on the food chain.

Researchers at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology say they have developed a plant-based diet for three popular saltwater fish — striped bass, cobia and Mediterranean sea bream. Taste-testers can't tell the difference between fish raised on the plant-based diet and those raised on fish meal, they say.

The two diets both contain fish oil, so neither was totally fish-free, but the researchers also raised fish on a vegetarian diet using wheat, corn, soy and algae meal to replace the oil. That raises the possibility of fish-free aquaculture for saltwater, carnivorous fish, said Aaron Watson, a graduate student at the institute.

"If we want to get aquaculture to expand, we need to find alternatives," Watson said.

Aquaculture for the first time this year accounted for more than half of global seafood consumption and is being looked at to keep up with increasing demand, said Tom Pickerell, senior science manager at Seafood Watch, a program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium that provides evidence-based recommendations on seafood consumption.

"It's really future planning. If we want to double or triple the amount of aquaculture production, we're going to have to look for alternative ways" to feed farmed fish, Pickerell said.

More than a quarter of all fish caught in 2008 were used for nonfood products, mainly fish meal and fish oil for farmed animals, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Read the full article at Boston.com

 

Changing ocean conditions have long been known to cause variability in abundance of wild fish stocks. With current conditions changing in ways not previously seen in historical times, more variability of wild fish stocks and ecosystems is to be expected.

Brad Warren, of Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, recently called attention to a paper documenting how Atlantic herring larvae react to higher CO2 concentrations in sea water. Higher oceanic CO2 concentrations are one of the consequences of more CO2 in the atmosphere, and mixed with water they form carbonic acid, and are responsible for increasingly acidic sea water.

Warren says ‘to my knowledge, this is the first paper with ‘strong indications that a commercially important fish is directly, physiological vulnerable to elevated CO2. ‘

The paper, by A. Franke and C. Clemmesen of the Leibniz-Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, examined larval survival of Atlantic herring as they were exposed to higher concentrations of CO2.

They found a strong correlation between higher CO2 levels and poorer nutrition and growth. The effect doesn't kick in until the more extreme CO2 levels are reached, which Warren says our levels that have only been recorded in a few locations in the surface and nearshore ocean so far.

The impact is not on the hatch rate or size or health of the larvae who have normal yolk sacs at all concentrations tested. The impact is no subsequent growth. At the higher CO2 levels, a marked decline in health and consequently larval survival was predicted, based on analysis of overall health of the larvae.

The suggestion is that elevated CO2 will be another stress factor that depresses survival for Atlantic herring larvae, and as a result, the acidification of ocean waters in the major herring spawning areas should be closely monitored.

Read the complete study

Republished with permission from Seafood News

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — The UMass Board of Trustees gave the green light to a $48 million expansion of SMAST Wednesday, effectively approving a land transfer from the federal government of just under 3 acres.

UMass plans to build 55,000 square feet of new education and research space on the property, formerly home to a Naval Reserve Training Center. The project will nearly double the current space for the School for Marine Science and Technology.

SMAST has a field of studies that includes ocean modeling and monitoring, fisheries science and management, coastal systems science, ocean acoustics, biogeochemistry and remote sensing and ocean engineering.

Its research has been praised locally for producing data that has helped the city's fishing industry.

Read the complete story from The Standard-Times

 

 

 

 

 

The new, grim government head count of local cod — which could, at worst, essentially outlaw the iconic catch — is based on factors that, as with all things fish, are inexact at best.

Built-in variables for the measurement — in stark contrast to fishermen's reports over the past three years of waters teeming with cod — could add up to a conclusion that just isn't so, some scientists say.

For one, the boats used to catch the fish for the scientific model in this and the previous study were different in many key respects that could affect the results. Also, the landings used to extrapolate the number of fish in the sea were based on catches limited by new regulations.

On the other hand, numerous local day boat fishermen have complained over the past months that large trip boats with no official observers aboard had in effect been pillaging Stellwagen Bank. There are also reports from fishermen that unusually large amounts of cod spawn have been found in the bellies of herring.

The anomalous assessment of the health of the cod stock in the Gulf of Maine (Cape Cod north to Nova Scotia), based on a report released last week by the federal New England Fisheries Management Council, reverses the optimistic report from a benchmark study released in 2008.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times

 

 

 

 

 

CHATHAM — The cod that once were right on this port's doorstep are gone, replaced with skates and dogfish.

So rather than go 100 miles offshore to Georges Bank where there still are cod, Chatham fisherman Eric Hesse decided a couple of years ago it made sense to travel 30 miles north instead to the Stellwagen Bank area where a 2008 stock assessment by the National Marine Fisheries Service said that the Gulf of Maine cod population was plentiful and growing rapidly.

But a new draft stock assessment released last week showed the 2008 assessment was wildly off base, and that fishermen have been catching five times as many fish as the stock can withstand.

Now, Hesse and other fishermen are faced with possible dramatic cuts to the amount of cod they will be allowed to catch in the coming year and for many years to come.

Read the complete story from The Cape Cod Times

 

 

 

 

 

VIMS genetic test can quickly identify origin of blue marlin to aid federal enforcement

The test is needed to ensure that the blue marlin sold in U.S. seafood markets were not taken from the Atlantic Ocean. The import and sale of blue marlin from the Pacific or Indian oceans is legal in the U.S., while the marketing of Atlantic blues can bring civil or criminal penalties, including fines, seizure of a catch, or the loss of a fishing permit. Regulation of Atlantic blue marlin reflects overfishing and a troubling drop in population within Atlantic waters.

Genetic tests to determine the origin of blue marlin and other marine species are conducted by the Marine Forensics Program within NOAA's Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research in Charleston, South Carolina. The Center is part of the National Ocean Service's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.

Trey Knott, a forensic biologist responsible for testing blue marlin at the Charleston lab, says "our relationship with the researchers at VIMS has been invaluable. We wouldn't have been able to tackle an R&D project like this given the casework load in our lab, and the folks at VIMS bring a wealth of historical experience and knowledge of billfish."

Read the complete story from Science Daily