Science

Nov 17 – Japanese and Indonesian researchers capture on film a newly born Coelacanth – a prehistoric fish experts see as a "missing link" between fish and amphibian creatures. See the video from Reuters at Sling.

A House hearing Wednesday will likely provide a forum for debating what widely-circulated emails among climate scientists do or don’t reveal about the state of global warming research.

The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing on climate science will feature two top administration officials: White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren, and Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Look for Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored the sweeping House climate bill that passed in June, to solicit testimony about the strength of research showing dangerous warming trends.

Read the complete story at The Hill.

Responding to the general warming of the northwest Atlantic Ocean over the last 40 years, a significant number of fish stocks have shifted to the north and deeper in an apparent effort to find optimal water temperature conditions, a study by NOAA researchers shows.

And some shifts are taking commercially important stocks toward the outer border of the 200-mile U.S. exclusive economic zone, the study’s authors say.

Published in the Oct. 30 edition of Marine Ecology Progress Series, the study of 36 stocks, including mainstays of the New England and Mid-Atlantic fisheries, reported that "there were clear poleward shifts consistent with warming" in 17 stocks, while four stocks appeared to shifted southward.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

Off the coast of Washington state, mysterious algae mixed with sea foam have killed more than 8,000 seabirds, puzzling scientists. A thousand miles off California, researchers have discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling vortex roughly twice the size of Texas filled with tiny bits of plastic and other debris.

Every summer a dead zone of oxygen-depleted water the size of Massachusetts forms in the Gulf of Mexico; others have been found off Oregon and in the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie and the Baltic and Black seas. Some studies indicate that North Pole seawater could turn caustic in 10 years, and that the Southern Ocean already may be saturated with carbon dioxide.

A recent bird kill off the coast of Washington state came without warning, said Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "There will be more surprises than that," she said.

Read the complete story at McClatchy DC.

A wolffish finding was published in the Federal Register.

It has been posted along with the status review report on the NERO’s website and is available here.

Read the notice in the Federal register.

NOAA’s Fisheries Service today announced that Atlantic wolffish are not currently in danger of extinction or likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future. This is the final decision on a petition received in October 2008 requesting that the species be listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Click here to learn more.

Jane Lubchenco, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will be among speakers Friday at the commissioner of the agency’s newest fisheries survey vessel and dedication of a new laboratory.

Both events will be held in Pascagoula.

The recently completed NOAA laboratory replaces the facility that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Read the complete story at The Picayune Item.

A new study by fisheries scientists in Woods Hole shows that about half of the 36 fish stocks they surveyed had shifted north or east toward cooler waters over the past 40 years, possibly in response to rising water temperatures due to global warming.

The study, conducted by scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fisheries Science Center, requires further research to factor out the effects of decades of overfishing to get a true picture of the impact of warming seas, researchers said.

But the fish migration northward could mean that fishermen will have to travel farther to catch familiar species but might also see new opportunities in species coming up from southern waters.

Still, it could mean that some species, like cod, may not find the rich food resources available on a place like Georges Bank.

Read the complete story at The Cape Cod Times.

NPR’s Fresh Air speaks with Daniel Pauly a professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia, who last month wrote "Aquacalypse Now: The End of Fish" in the New Republic last month.

Daniel Pauly, warns that the global fishing industry has drastically depleted the number of fish in the oceans. In an Oct. 7, 2009 article published by The New Republic, Pauly writes that in the past 50 years "we have reduced the populations of large commercial fish, such as bluefin tuna, cod, and other favorites, by a staggering 90 percent."

Pauly says that as the fish populations decline, boats have begun to catch fish that weren’t considered before — sometimes renaming them to sound more appetizing. (Thus the "Patagonian toothfish" becomes the "Chilean seabass.")

Listen to the complete story at NPR.

See also: Aquacalypse Now: the end of fish, by Daniel Pauly,

It should have been Acrockalypse Now.

Southern species like Atlantic Croaker may become common in New England waters.

About half of 36 fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, many of them commercially valuable species, have been shifting northward over the last four decades, with some stocks nearly disappearing from U.S. waters as they move farther offshore, according to a new study by NOAA researchers.

Their findings, published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, show the impact of changing coastal and ocean temperatures on fisheries from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to the Canadian border.

Janet Nye, a postdoctoral researcher at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. and the lead author of the study, looked at annual spring survey data from 1968 to 2007 for stocks ranging from Atlantic cod and haddock to yellowtail and winter flounders, spiny dogfish, Atlantic herring, and less well-known species like blackbelly rosefish. Historic ocean temperature records and long-term processes like the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation dating back to 1850 were also analyzed to put the temperature data into context.

Read the complete Press Release at Northeast Fisheries Science Center.