Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: First permits issuing for California deep-set swordfish captains

October 3, 2023 — The first commercial fishing permits for using deep-set buoy gear in the swordfish fishery in the U.S. state of California were issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service 15 September, marking a milestone in the long transition away from large mesh drift gillnets off the West Coast.

Gillnets are to be finally phased out by 2027, replaced largely by deep-set buoy gear – vertical mainlines around 150 fathoms in length, with a flagpole outfitted with a light or radar reflector at the surface and a heavy sinker to keep the line anchored vertically.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Reducing fishing gear could save whales with low impacts to California’s crab fishermen

October 2, 2023 — Sometimes simple solutions are better. It all depends on the nature of the problem. For humpback whales, the problem is the rope connecting a crab trap on the seafloor to the buoy on the surface. And for fishermen, it’s fishery closures caused by whale entanglements.

Managing this issue is currently a major item on California’s agenda, and it appears less fishing gear may be the optimal solution. So says a team of researchers led by Christopher Free, at UC Santa Barbara, after modeling the benefits and impacts that several  would have on whales and fishermen. Their results, published in the journal Biological Conservation, find that simply reducing the amount of gear in the water is more effective than dynamic approaches involving real-time monitoring of whale populations. There may even be solutions on the horizon that provide these benefits with fewer drawbacks.

“We were trying to figure out what types of management strategies would work best at reducing whale entanglements in the Dungeness crab fishery while also minimizing impacts to fishing,” said first author Free, a researcher at the university’s Marine Science Institute. “And what we found is that some of the simpler strategies, such as just reducing the amount of gear allocated to the fishermen, outperformed a lot of the more complex management strategies.”

Management falls into two basic categories. Static strategies remain the same regardless of conditions. These include gear reductions, season delays and early closures. Meanwhile, dynamic strategies adapt based on incoming information. These come in proactive and reactive flavors, depending on whether the change is based on surveys determining where whales are abundant or observed entanglements indicating where risk might be high.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

California takes big first step toward floating offshore wind

September 27, 2023 — California has a goal of building gigawatts of wind power off its coast by the end of the decade. To meet that goal, it has to create a floating offshore wind industry from scratch.

Last week, state lawmakers took a key step in that process: passing a bill that would help California kick-start its nascent offshore wind industry by purchasing massive amounts of power from early-stage projects that might be too big or too risky for other potential buyers.

The passage of AB 1373, which Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has pledged to sign into law, is just the first in a series of steps needed to build the massive offshore transmission lines, port facilities, turbine manufacturing capacity and extensive supply chains needed to reach its goals. But energy industry groups agree that without the central procurement mechanism the bill aims to create, California’s offshore wind ambitions won’t become reality.

“This was the tip-of-the-spear issue,” said Molly Croll, director of Pacific offshore wind at American Clean Power, a clean energy trade group. ​“It doesn’t provide complete market certainty — but it provides much more market clarity than we had before.”

If signed into law, AB 1373 would allow the California Public Utilities Commission to authorize the California Department of Water Resources, which operates dams and aqueducts across the state, to sign contracts committing to purchase gigawatts’ worth of generation from yet-to-be-built offshore wind farms and then pass the costs on to all Californians.

Read the full article at Canary Media

Millions pegged for salmon, steelhead recovery

September 25, 2023 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is recommending sending $106 million to 16 salmon and steelhead recovery efforts in five Western states.

NOAA and the Department of Commerce recommended grants to state agencies with salmon protection missions, tribes and tribal partnerships in Idaho, Alaska, Oregon, Washington and California.

The funding “provides an important opportunity to bolster salmon and steelhead recovery and invest in the communities that rely on them,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement.

Read the full article at The Challis Messenger

CALIFORNIA: Half Moon Bay fishermen reeling from lost income amid salmon fishery closure

September 21, 2023 — Commercial salmon fishing season has been closed in the state of California for the past several months and fishermen in Half Moon Bay are feeling the impacts.

At Half Moon Bay’s Pillar Point Harbor, it’s so quiet even the sea lions are bored.

“It’s quiet, you look at this harbor and it’s just empty, there’s no activity,” Porter McHenry, a commercial fisherman said.

McHenry says at this time of the year, from May to October, he would typically rely on salmon.

“There’s going to be nothing until crab season,” he said.

Back in March, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the drought from recent years limited salmon’s ability to breed and that there weren’t enough to open the commercial season this year.

Read the full article at ABC 7 News

California’s floating wind lead threatened by fast-rising Maine

September 17, 2023 — The U.S. has allocated its first floating wind leases and aims to install 15 GW by 2035 but participants warn the first large-scale arrays may still be a decade away.

Development activity is growing on East and West coasts but transmission grids, ports and supply chains must be expanded to achieve commercially viable projects.

California and the East coast state of Maine have set out floating wind targets but different strategies towards the scaling up of floating wind could see their trajectories diverge.

In the U.S.’ first floating wind auction, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) allocated five floating wind projects in California for a total 4.6 GW capacity.

The state of California aims to install 2 to 5 GW of floating wind capacity by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045 but market observers do not expect the first projects to come online before 2035.

The deep waters of the Pacific Coast mean that, unlike on the East Coast, developers will not benefit from infrastructure built earlier for conventional fixed-bottom offshore projects. Ports must be expanded and adapted to assemble huge components and regional supply chains must be built out to achieve economies of scale.

Read the full article at Reuters

CALIFORNIA: Commercial crabbers worry bringing sea otters back to San Francisco Bay could hurt industry

August 26, 2023 — There is a push by conservationists to reintroduce threatened sea otters to San Francisco Bay waters, but local crab fishermen are concerned the move could hurt their already struggling industry.

Federal wildlife officials say it’s possible, but haven’t made a decision whether to green light the move. Those efforts worry fishermen like Dick Ogg because of the sea mammals’ voracious appetite for crustaceans like Dungeness crab.

“I don’t feel like it’s our place to pick them up and relocate them. Yes, there could be impacts to the fishery,” said Ogg.

The fur trade era in the 19th century nearly wiped out the now-endangered species. Marine biologists are trying to determine what’s best for conservation, fisheries like the Dungeness crab industry and the marine environment.

“Sea otters tend to promote the resilience of kelp and sea grass. And those habitats provide habitat and food for hundreds upon hundreds of species,” explained U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Lilian Carswell, who specializes in sea otters.

Read the full article at CBS News

Ocean off California’s Central Coast may be ‘thermal refuge’ from climate change, study says

August 23, 2023 — In an otherwise warming planet, new research shows that the ocean off California’s Central Coast may be a thermal refuge for marine wildlife.

Cal Poly associate professor Ryan Walter, who teaches physics, and fourth-year physics student Michael Dalsin analyzed temperature data gathered from 1978 through 2020 at a site just north of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

They found that while other areas of the world see sharp rises in ocean temperatures and more frequent and more intense heatwaves, the Central Coast hasn’t seen such intense trends.

The region still experiences marine heatwaves and cold spells brought on by factors such as the ocean-wide climactic patterns of El Niño and La Niña, but cold current upwelling brought on by strong local winds helps maintain the marine ecosystem along the Central Coast, according to a study by Walter and Dalsin published on July 31.

Read the full story at the Merced Sun-Star

World’s largest dam removal project gets approval

August 4, 2023 — In a historic move, U.S. regulators have given the green light to a groundbreaking plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River in California, paving the way for the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s unanimous vote on the proposal represents a major milestone for the $500 million demolition plan, which has been ardently supported by Native American tribes and environmentalists for years. The ambitious initiative aims to restore the lower half of California’s second-largest river to its natural free-flowing state, effectively opening up hundreds of miles of critical salmon habitat.

For Native tribes that have relied on the Klamath River and its salmon for their way of life, the dam removal represents a long-awaited victory. Situated in a wild and remote area straddling the California and Oregon border, the dams’ presence has hindered the migratory routes of salmon for over a century. With the removal of these barriers, the salmon’s path to their spawning grounds will be restored, reviving not only the ecological health of the river but also preserving the cultural heritage of the tribes.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman