Saving Seafood

Study of US tuna fisheries explores nexus of climate change, sustainable seafood

April 14, 2021 — A new study published in Elementa by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and NOAA examines traditional aspects of seafood sustainability alongside greenhouse gas emissions to better understand the ‘carbon footprint’ of U.S. tuna fisheries.

Fisheries in the United States are among the best managed in the world, thanks to ongoing efforts to  selectively, end overfishing, and rebuild fish stocks. But  could bring dramatic changes in the marine environment that threaten  productivity and sustainability. That’s one reason why researchers set out to broaden the conversation about sustainability in seafood by comparing the carbon emissions of different  fishing practices.

The paper also puts those emissions in context relative to other sources of protein, like tofu, chicken, pork, or beef. In particular, the study examined how the carbon footprint of tuna was affected by how far from shore fishing fleets operated, or what type of fishing gear they used.

“This can be an opportunity to look at fisheries from different angles, all of which may be important,” said Brandi McKuin, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in  at UC Santa Cruz.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Alaska pollock fish sticks, surimi processing generates “significant” greenhouse gas emissions

January 24, 2020 — The processing of Alaskan pollock into products such as fish sticks, surimi and fish fillets generates “significant greenhouse gas emissions,” researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz have found.

According to a study released by the university, the processing of the products post-catch results in almost twice as many emissions as the fishing itself. Typically, climate impact analysis of fishing ends once the catch is brought on-board.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Cleaner fuels for fishing boats could backfire on the climate

February 5, 2016 — Fish is better than pork and beef—not just for your body, but for the planet. That’s long been the thinking, anyway. But a new study has uncovered a hidden climate impact of the fishing industry—one that, ironically, will get worse as boats switch to cleaner fuels. In some cases, the effect could make fishing for tuna as hard on the climate as raising pork, and trawling for shrimp about half as bad as raising beef.

Hogs and cattle get a bad rap because they—and their manure—emit a lot of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. But the fishing industry also contributes to climate change: mostly from the carbon dioxide (CO2) from burned diesel fuel that persists in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. The boats produce other short-lived pollutants, such as sulfur oxides and black carbon, which have cooling and warming effects, respectively. But they have typically been neglected as unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

The new study may change that. Elliott Campbell and Brandi McKuin, environmental engineers at the University of California (UC), Merced, estimated fishing industry emissions by combining fisheries catch records with the amount of fuel typically needed to catch various species. Given the total burned fuel, they estimated the amounts of the pollutants, using information about engine types and fuel types. Black carbon, a form of soot that arises from incomplete combustion, has been underestimated by an order of magnitude in previous studies, the team reports in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Read the full story from Science Magazine