Science

NewsHour Correspondent Tom Bearden talks to researchers who are assessing the long-term damage to the Gulf. In Alabama, scientists are examining whether damage done to fish larvae is linked to the oil spill.

See the video from PBS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For almost three months this year, a mini-volcano of oil and gas erupted into the Gulf of Mexico and disgorged nearly 5 million barrels of petroleum. Throughout the crisis, a poised scientist gave countless media interviews to explain to a scared and angry public how the US government was striving to contain the damage. Behind the scenes, with decisive leadership, she ran the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the agency that closed fisheries, tracked oil, protected habitats and assessed the damage to communities and the environment. For her role in the response to the crisis, Jane Lubchenco is Nature's Newsmaker of the Year.

Before becoming NOAA administrator in 2009, Lubchenco had a reputation as both a leading researcher and an environmental advocate. She made important advances in the basic science of coastal ecology and helped to raise awareness of the many threats to ocean ecosystems around the world. Lubchenco is now reorienting her US$4.7-billion federal agency to strengthen the science and policies that protect US marine resources.

The United States could do with more scientists like Lubchenco, with the skills and the dedication to speak out on issues that matter. The need will be particularly acute next year, when the Republican Party takes over the US House of Representatives. Although Republicans have generally supported basic science, incoming House leaders have made it clear that they are hostile to certain areas of research. Some have pledged to hold hearings on climate science, which they argue is seriously flawed and has overstated the evidence for global warming. Adrian Smith (Republican, Nebraska) introduced the YouCut Citizen Review, which calls on the US public to search the National Science Foundation website list of peer-reviewed grants for those they consider wasteful.

Read the complete story from Nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The global demand for seafood is high, and over the past several decades the harvesting of wild fish from the oceans has grown into a huge business. In the 1950s most of the world's commercial fisheries were concentrated in the northern Atlantic and Pacific, near the coasts of heavily industrialized nations such the U.S., the U.K. and Japan. Since that time the industry has expanded rapidly southward, and into deeper waters in search of more fish to satisfy the growing market and to compensate for depleted legacy fisheries. Between 1950, the year the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) began releasing an annual report of catch statistics, and the late 1980s the global annual reported catch ballooned from around 18 million metric tons to peak at about 80 million metric tons. Since then, the catch has stagnated, dropping to near 79 million metric tons in 2005.

There is no argument the industry's massive growth has vastly affected ocean ecosystems, but the extent to which this disruption has depleted and continues to deplete the sea's biodiversity has become source of a heated debate within the world of marine fisheries science. At the center of the disagreement, which is highlighted by two recently published studies, is a question: What is the best way to measure the ecological footprint of commercial fishing?

The answer is complicated, due to the inconsistent nature of the data from a large portion the world's fisheries, especially those operated by developing nations. But the authors of a new study published December 2 in PLoS One say they have for the first time quantified, on a global scale, the ecological consequences of commercial fishing. They say their results, gleaned by analyzing global catch statistics, reveal that only the expansion into new fishing grounds has maintained seafood supply by making up for devastating destruction of the biodiversity in older fisheries. Now, they say, there is no more room to expand, and current fishing practices are not sustainable.

Read the complete story from Scientific American.

 

 

 

 

 

A sprawling department of 12,800 people with a budget of US$4.7 billion, NOAA has responsibilities stretching from the bottom of the sea to the top of the atmosphere and even to the Sun, which it monitors for signs of solar storms. That mandate put Dr. Jane Lubchenco at the centre of the government's response to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil-spill disaster — a brutal test for a scientist with little previous management experience.

On board the boat, she relishes the chance to talk about dolphin behaviour with the NOAA researchers, but seems to get the biggest kick when the pilot gives her a turn at the wheel. Gripping the throttle, Lubchenco has to be reminded to stay below the speed limit as she motors through the narrow waterway.

Going slow does not come easily to the NOAA leader. As a celebrated scientist and vocal conservationist, she made her name urging other researchers to speak out on issues of public importance, a stance that not all of her academic colleagues were comfortable with. Now, at an age when many of her cohort are easing back, she is taking on the most ambitious challenge of her career: reorienting how the nation responds to pressing environmental problems such as dwindling fish stocks, rising seas and a changing climate. She has bold plans to strengthen scientific research at NOAA, make it more relevant to society and improve the health of ecosystems and coastal communities.

Read the complete story from Nature News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actor and environmentalist Ed Begley Jr., Holdren, and NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco sat through 6-hours of lectures on climate research and songs to celebrate the life of the climatologist who could communicate science like few others.

In March, climatologist Steven Schneider, drowsy from chemotherapy, was getting ready to go to bed. When he checked his e-mail, though, he found hundreds of messages from global warming skeptics and decided to respond. The next thing he knew, it was 3 a.m. and his wife was yelling at him to go to sleep. "In illness and in health, he was just plain working harder than everyone else on what needed doing," said White House scientist-in-chief John Holdren on Sunday at a memorial service for Schneider.

Schneider was a tireless and prolific scientist, publishing hundreds of influencial papers that he wrote, or edited as founder of Climatic Change. His battle with lymphoma barely slowed him down, but some speculated that his relentless pace may have ultimately taken a toll. Schneider died in July of an apparent heart attack while flying back to California from a climate meeting. "This brave and relentless man killed himself trying to do what he thought was right," said Former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth.

Memories, alcohol, and tears flowed between PowerPoint presentations on climate science and politics at this wonky and star-studded "Memorial Celebration." More than 300 climate scientists, colleagues, and friends of Schneider crowded into a big lecture hall at Stanford University

Read the complete story from Science Mag.

 

 

 

 

 

Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) is not a new idea: cultures in ancient Egypt and China used these natural techniques, says Yarish. By bringing animals and plants from different trophic levels – different levels on the food chain – into the same place, aquaculture can function more like a natural ecosystem.

Over the past year, Charles Yarish and his colleagues received nearly $200,000 in funding from the Connecticut Sea Grant College Program and the NOAA Small Business Innovation Fund both to grow seaweeds for human consumption and to develop technologies that will support IMTA in New England coastal waters.

Many types of seaweed need water rich in inorganic nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous to survive. “Fish poop,” says Yarish, is made up of just these nutrients, and so provides sustenance for the seaweeds. Human products that find their way into waterways, such as nutrients derived from sewage treatment facilities and from land runoff, also provide these nutrients.

Read the complete story from The University of Connecticut.

 

 

 

 

 

More than two months before biologists threw their first net into the water to gauge the success of this year’s striped bass reproduction, Ed Martino had the answer, and he never had to leave his desk.

Rockfish reproduction, Martino determined in May, would be “well below average.”

The researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Cooperative Oxford Laboratory came up with his conclusion by going online and looking at March though May river flows monitored by the U.S. Geological Survey and temperature data from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport for the same period, then plugging the information into a mathematical model.

While Martino crunched numbers in his office, a team of biologists from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources waded into the water at 22 locations once a month from July through September. At each site, they did two sweeps through the water with a 100-foot seine net, then counted everything they caught.

Read the complete story from The Daily Record.

 

 

 

 

 

To judge by recent reports from Hawaii—once regarded as the Silicon Valley of aquaculture due to its offshore lease laws, wealth of fishing and marine science experts, and 200,000-square-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ)—things are not working out quite as hoped. One pioneering OOA operation has declared bankruptcy; another is seeking $5 million in financing.

Open Ocean Aquaculture (OOA) is a hoped-for solution to the problems generated by fish farms operated in calm waters near shore. The idea is that putting farm nets further out to sea in wilder winds and currents will disperse the impacts of growing fish more quickly.

Governments around the world, including the U.S. and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), have signed on to the idea of OOA, but not without criticism.

Backers see plenty of room for growth; 3.4 million square miles of waters surround the U.S. If everyone eventually agrees on the ground rules and impacts, farms could fourish.

A trio of Hawaiian farms is attempting to raise moi, kahala and ahi in farms as far as three miles off the coast. Some of the huge cages—177 feet in diameter—are capable of containing 20,000 fish, weighing up to 100 pounds each. One of the three companies, Hawaiian Oceanic, predicts it can grow 12 million pounds of ahi a year, at a value of $108 million.

Read the complete story from Take Part.

 

 

 

 

 

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by Ray Hilborn – Dec 6, 2010

Prof. Ray Hilborn, of the University of Washington, is one of the leading global researchers on adaptive ecosystem management for fisheries. He has consistently argued that the doomsday narrative of continuous global overfishing is not supported by facts; that instead where good fisheries management is applied, fisheries and ecosystems are stable, thriving, and producing huge economic benefits. Given the prominence of the controversies over seafood sustainability, Ray and some of his colleagues have agreed to write a series of occasional comments for Seafoodnews.com when major fisheries papers or ideas about sustainability are published or discussed.

Today's comment regards the paper published last week by Swartz et al. New Pauly study says that expansion of fishing fleets overwhelming new geographical areas to fish.

A recent paper by Swartz et al. argues that the area around the world being fished expanded in the 1980s and 1990s so that most of the worlds continental shelves are now being fished. The authors then suggest that this means that there are no new places for fisheries expansion. Essentially we have found all the major fish stocks of the world and we are exploiting them.

This result is not new and I believe it is widely accepted. In a paper published this summer by Sethi and others in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors showed that all of the major fish species of the world were being exploited by 1990 Ð while new fish stocks have been added since then, these new species are insignificant in terms of world catch and seafood security.

Essentially the spatial expansion since 1990 has been largely irrelevant to world fish production. Fishing fleets had found all the fish by 1990. Swartz and authors then argue that this expansion means that most fisheries are not currently sustainable and harvest must be reduced to achieve sustainability. However, we know much more about the current sustainability of fishing pressure.

In a paper in Science in 2009 Worm et al. looked at the rate of exploitation rate for individual stocks around the world, a much better measure of the sustainability of exploitation. Their data show that only 17% of the world fish stocks for which they had data are now fished so hard the stocks would be considered overfished by U.S. standards if the current fishing pressure is maintained. It is those 17% of fish stocks, including bluefin tuna and many sharks for instance, that are in urgent need of reduced fishing pressure.

However for all the other 83% of fish stocks, current fishing pressure is sustainable and would produce near maximum long term food production if we continue as we are now. Thus we can assure world seafood security by reducing pressure in only 17% of fish stocks. If we want to achieve current biomass targets then the data in Worm et al. suggest that another 17% or so of stocks need further fishing reductions. Reduction of fishing pressure in these stocks will not significantly decrease food production, but will reduce ecosystem impacts of fishing and the economic profitability of fisheries.

Swartz et al. use the ratio between primary production and fisheries catch as an index of overfishing. They present a figure showing much of the world as red an indication of exploitation rates they argue are not sustainable.

Yet those red areas include the best managed areas in the world where we know from detailed data that fishing is very sustainable. These areas include the eastern Bering sea, the west coast of the United States, New Zealand and the Barents Sea. This is simply another effort to use catch data to indicate the status of marine fisheries and we have lots of evidence using catch data does not work. The all fish will be gone by 2048 was based on analysis of catch trends. When we looked at abundance trends in Worm et al. 2009 we found no indication of overall declines in stock biomass.

This paper paints a picture of global concern about the sustainability of fisheries rather than more specifically targeting the fisheries where problems in seafood security are pressing.

 

This article is reproduced with permission from SeafoodNews.com , a subscription site.

 

 

An invasive sea squirt is increasingly being found spread like batter on the ocean floor off New England, but new research shows that’s not all bad news, despite fears about damage the animal could cause.

The sea squirt rapidly expands on hard ocean bottom in rope-like chains or mats, and scientists worry it could crowd out valuable species that live on or near the sea floor, such as scallops.

But new evidence shows some sea life and the fish that eats it actually thrive in regions where the sea squirt has taken hold. It’s an unexpectedly positive spin to the intrusion of a species scientists acknowledge they don’t fully understand.

"This seems to be like the ecosystem is just sort of (saying): ’OK, if you’re able to withstand that and survive here, then you might actually find it favorable and benefit to some degree,’" said Brian Smith, a federal food web ecologist who’s studying how the sea squirts are affecting groundfish diets.

Read the complete story from The Boston Herald.