May 12, 2024 — There is a popular quotation among fisheries scientists by John Shepherd: “Counting fish is just like counting trees, except they’re invisible and they keep moving around.” It’s a great analogy, and a good illustration of why surveys are valuable for fisheries management. When scientists fish areas in a standardized way over many years, it gives us a way to keep a relative count of fish stocks over time, despite all the moving these “invisible” fish may do. When it comes to managing long-lived species like sharks, repeated surveying over the years can also be an opportunity to see repeat customers!
Studying Sound in the Ocean to Prepare for Offshore Wind Development
May 9, 2024 — Moving the nation toward renewable energy and away from fossil fuels is a big priority for the Biden administration in its effort to address climate change. And a key piece of the strategy to get there is generating more offshore wind energy.
Passive acoustics—or underwater listening technology—is a useful tool for monitoring marine mammals. It’s also increasingly important as offshore wind energy development progresses along the East Coast.
In our new episode, we’ll hear from Sofie Van Parijs, passive acoustics lead at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. She talks about a study that used passive acoustics to record the sounds in the ocean off of southern New England, which is a vibrant and diverse area for whales and other marine mammals. Scientists monitored ambient sounds, fish and marine mammal activity, vessel occurrences, and other noises around offshore wind turbines. This datay, along with other tools and technologies, will help us prepare for and mitigate the impacts of offshore wind developments.
Our experts also address some of the misinformation about offshore wind development and its potential impact on whales and other marine mammals.
North Pacific Orcas Might Be Reclassified As 2 Distinct Species—Here’s Why
May 9, 2024 — Orcas, also known as killer whales, are incredible creatures. Their undeniable intelligence, complex social structures, impressive communication skills and collaborative hunting strategies have captured the wonder of humans for centuries.
Despite their name, “killer whales” aren’t true whales–they are, in fact, “oceanic dolphins.” Generally, whales tend to be larger and have more elongated bodies compared to dolphins.
Orcas and other oceanic dolphins typically have more streamlined, agile bodies with pronounced beaks and a dorsal fin that is often more prominent and curved. In contrast, many whale species have larger, bulkier bodies with smaller dorsal fins relative to their size.
Wind turbine ‘wake effect’ could reduce arrays’ power output by 30%
May 8, 2024 — Downstream turbulence from offshore wind turbines can reduce power generation at nearby turbines, substantially reducing the total potential from planned U.S. offshore wind projects, according to recent research from the Colorado University Boulder and National Energy Technology Laboratory.
The researchers’ paper published March 14 in the journal Wind Energy Science suggests that offshore wind turbines off the U.S. East Coast could rob neighboring turbine arrays of wind speed and thus power generation depending on daily conditions, by more than 30%.
“As a result, the wind slows down and becomes more turbulent behind the turbines. This means the turbines downstream get slower wind, sometimes resulting in lower power generation,” according to a Colorado State University summary of the research.
Scoping it Out: A First-of-its-Kind Survey for False Killer Whales
May 8, 2024 — Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center scientists are spending a month at sea (April 23–May 22) aboard the NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette on the Survey for Continued Observation of Pseudorca Extent (SCOPE). They’re searching for pelagic false killer whales in an area they have not surveyed before and using specialized methods to collect biological data from as many false killer whales as possible.
They will use the same methods to look and listen for whales and dolphins on this mission that they have used for many years on other surveys.
During SCOPE, they have increased capacity to:
- Locate false killer whales
- Take photo-identification images
- Collect biopsy samples
- Deploy satellite tags when this species is found
These key types of data are limited for pelagic false killer whales—including the Hawaiʻi pelagic population that has a new management area to address bycatch in the Hawaiʻi deep-set longline fishery.
Scallop Research Set-Aside projects for 2024
May 7, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries announced 14 projects to be funded through the 2024 Scallop Research Set-Aside Program, with researchers partnering with the scallop fleet to investigate sea scallop research priorities developed by the New England Fishery Management Council.
Participants conduct research and harvest their set-aside award, generating funds for the research. Based on an ex-vessel price estimate of $14 per pound, NOAA Fisheries expects the awards to generate approximately $22 million; $5 million to fund research, and $17 million to compensate industry partners who harvest the set-aside scallops.
“In RSA programs, researchers compete for funding through a federal grant competition managed by NOAA Fisheries,” according to the announcement from the NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic office. “No federal funds support the research. Instead, the programs award pounds of sea scallops from amounts “set-aside” annually for this purpose.”
Fish are shrinking around the world. Here’s why scientists are worried.
May 6, 2024 — There’s something fishy going on in the water. Across Earth’s oceans, fish are shrinking — and no one can agree why.
It’s happening with salmon near the Arctic Circle and skate in the Atlantic. Nearly three-fourths of marine fish populations sampled worldwide have seen their average body size dwindle between 1960 and 2020, according to a recent analysis.
Overfishing and human-caused climate change are decreasing the size of adult fish, threatening the food supply of more than 3 billion people who rely on seafood as a significant source of protein.
As fish get smaller, there is less meat to cook per catch. So scientists are working to piece together why exactly fish respond to rising ocean temperatures by getting smaller.
“This is a pretty fundamental question,” said Lisa Komoroske, a conservation biologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “But we still don’t understand why.”
Mussel shells are changing as the ocean warms, study finds
May 3, 2024 — In Massachusetts, common blue mussels may not have the star power of Wellfleet oysters or the charisma of quahogs. But like all shellfish they play an important role in marine ecosystems. Mussels are filter feeders that clean water as they eat; and they clump into reefs that create habitat for other critters and buffer coasts from storms.
But mussels are threatened by the warming waters and ocean acidification arriving with climate change. New research shows that mussels from several East Coast locations, though not yet Massachusetts, have shells speckled with tiny holes — far more than the mussels of yesteryear.
This increased porosity is not enough to weaken the shells, yet, “but if we continue down this route, they might get there,” said study author Leanne Melbourne, a postdoctoral researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, who used historic mussel shells from museum’s collections for the study.
Melbourne, who studies the impact of climate change on marine organisms, said that ocean warming is the “most likely driver” of the increased porosity.
Overfishing and sustainability
April 24, 2024 — In 2006, a study featured in the New York Times went viral. This study claimed that virtually all fished species would disappear by 2048 due to overfishing if current trends continued.
The claim was met with backlash by fisheries scientists and disproven with many follow up studies. Part of what caused this misunderstanding in 2006 was that fisheries science is very technical and can easily be misunderstood by the general public.
“The U.S. definition of overfishing is anytime your harvest rate is higher than the level that would produce maximum long-term yield,” Ray Hilborn, a professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS) at UW, said.
A common misconception is that if a stock is determined as “overfished,” the stock is in danger of extinction. This is only true in very extreme cases, Hilborn explained. The real result of overfishing is depletion of a stock, ultimately leading to lower long-term yields.
Scientists in the field of fisheries management provide advice unique to each wild capture fishery’s objective, which is then used to set catch limits enforced by the federal and state legislature.
New Study Confirms Warming Ocean’s Impact on Ocean Quahog
April 24, 2024 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:
A new study examining the fossil record of ocean quahog, one of the longest-lived species in the ocean, further confirms that climate change is impacting the distribution and growth of shellfish across the Atlantic. Building on previous work examining regional ocean quahog populations, the study, funded by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries, expands our understanding on how shellfish species are reacting to warmer waters and changing habitats.
Ocean quahogs are an extremely long-lived species; some of the oldest ocean quahogs living today are over 200 years old, with some of them having lived long enough to pre-date the Industrial Revolution. Like using a tree’s rings to learn its life cycle, studying ocean quahog shells can tell us both about the growth and history of an ocean quahog, and about past climate conditions. This study, published in Continental Shelf Research, analyzes the historical growth rate of ocean quahogs off the Delmarva peninsula compared to modern populations, identifies the historical distribution of optimal conditions for ocean quahog growth, and how current warming trends are impacting the species.
Specifically, the study looks at ocean quahog growth rates and compares those rates of growth with known climate conditions, such as historic cold periods like the Little Ice Age and a warmer period known as the Medieval Warm Period. It finds that ocean quahogs once were found well inshore of their present distribution when climates were much colder than today, and that during these times they grew as fast or faster than today, helped by a likely combination of optimal temperatures and abundant food supply.
Ocean quahogs today are also growing at a much slower rate in some regions than similar ocean quahogs in the period from 1740-1940, with the evidence indicating that current temperatures in these areas are above the historical, optimal range that encourages ocean quahog growth.
“This study is further confirmation that ocean temperatures are continuing to move away from the conditions where ocean quahog thrive, which has long-term implications for both the species and the fisheries that depend on them,” said Alyssa LeClaire, a Coastal Ecologist at NOAA Fisheries’ Beaufort Lab, the lead author of the study. “This is just the beginning of studying the future of climate impacts on this species, and hopefully further research will continue to explore the relationship between ocean quahog and climate.”
In a related finding, the study also concluded that, as waters begin to warm, the range of ocean quahogs will begin to slowly retract long before a population is completely gone from an area. Because ocean quahogs are so long-lived, this is a slow process, taking a hundred years or more from the first signs of decrease to be completely gone from an area.
Similar to earlier SCEMFIS-funded studies on ocean quahog, this study relies on an extensive dataset of quahog shells, collected in previous surveys, this time from the Delmarva region of the Atlantic. Previous studies funded by the Center have focused on ocean quahog populations off New Jersey, Long Island and Georges Bank. Together, they draw from one of the largest and most representative sample collections of ocean quahog available, an archive that has potential to aid in future climate research.
“Ocean quahog shells have the potential to be a valuable resource in reconstructing historical climate data,” said LeClaire. “Because the species is sensitive to changes in temperature, they can tell us about changes in climate over the decades of a quahog’s life cycle, which can help us in modeling future changes.”
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