Saving Seafood

Pacific Sardine Landings May Shift North as Ocean Warms, New Projections Show

February 25, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Pacific sardines are a small but sometimes numerous fish closely intertwined with California’s fishing history. A new study linking climate change and the northern sardine stock fishery shows that they may shift north along the West Coast as the ocean warms.

A climate-driven northward shift by sardines could cause a decline in landings of the northern sardine stock by 20 to 50 percent in the next 60 years. These changes would affect historic California fishing ports such as San Pedro and Moss Landing, according to the new research published in Fisheries Oceanography. The study did not examine whether southern sardine stock would also shift northward, potentially offsetting this decline in landings. In turn, landings at northern port cities such as Astoria, Oregon, and Westport, Washington, are projected to benefit.

Researchers examined three possible “climate futures.” The warmest had the most pessimistic outcomes, with total sardine landings in all West Coast states declining 20 percent by 2080.

Understanding climate-driven shifts in habitat helps predict impacts on landings

The study translates environmental shifts into possible impacts on fishing communities and coastal economies. Sardines have historically gone through “boom and bust” changes in their population. Their numbers off the West Coast have remained low in recent years, with the West Coast sardine fishery closed since 2015. This research does not project changes in the abundance of sardines. Instead, it shows that climate-driven shifts in their habitat may have a significant impact on landings at historically important ports.

“As the marine environment changes, so too will the distribution of marine species,” said James Smith, a research scientist with the University of Santa Cruz affiliated with NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “But linking future changes in the distribution of species with impacts on the fishing fleet has been challenging. Hopefully our study can provide information about potential impacts in coming decades, and thereby inform strategies to mitigate these impacts.”

Read the full release here

CALIFORNIA: Innovative fishing gear is being tested to reduce impact on whales and sea turtles

February 22, 2021 — A new collaborative project between environmental groups, the state, scientists, and Dungeness crab fishers is testing innovative new gear designed to reduce the impact of whales and sea turtles getting caught in fishing gear.

This is in response to California’s recent state regulations to reduce the risk of endangered whales and sea turtles getting caught in commercial Dungeness crab gear. The regulations went into effect last November, and when high numbers of humpback whales were sighted off the coast near San Francisco and Monterey Bay, the opening of the commercial Dungeness crab season was delayed by about a month.

Since 2014, the number of interactions between whales and fishing gear has been historically high. In 2019, for example, 26 whales were entangled off the West Coast, 17 of which were humpback whales.

“There’s a vertical line attached to the trap that goes to the buoys at the surface,” said Greg Wells of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation who is managing the collaborative gear-testing research project. “That’s the part that poses an entanglement risk for whales and other marine life.”

Read the full story at The Monterey Herald

Researchers demonstrate new method to track genetic diversity of salmon and trout

February 19, 2021 — Scientists at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service have demonstrated that DNA extracted from water samples from rivers across Oregon and Northern California can be used to estimate genetic diversity of Pacific salmon and trout.

The findings, just published in the journal Molecular Ecology, have important implications for conservation and management of these , which are threatened by human activities, including those exacerbating climate change.

“There has been a dearth of this kind of data across the Northwest,” said Kevin Weitemier, a postdoctoral fellow at Oregon State and lead author of the paper. “This allows us to get a quick snapshot of multiple populations and species all at once.”

In addition to demonstrating that environmental DNA, or eDNA, can be used to measure , the researchers also made unexpected discoveries about the history of these species, including a connection that links watersheds in northern and southern Oregon.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Ropeless gear bill introduced in California statehouse

February 17, 2021 — A bill to require the use of ropeless pop-up gear in Dungeness crab and other trap fisheries by November 2025 was introduced into the California State Assembly on Thursday, Feb. 11.

Dubbed the Whale Entanglement Prevention Act, fishermen say the passage of such a law would be a death knell for the iconic and recently embattled Dungeness crab fishery. But at this point, there isn’t much fear among the fleet, as the bill could be dead in the water.

“I think we’re going to kill it,” said Ben Platt, a Crescent City-based fisherman and president of the California Coast Crab Association. “It’s not going to make it out of committee.”

Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) introduced the bill, AB-534, with two environmental organizations as cosponsors, Social Compassion in Legislation and the Center for Biological Diversity. The latter group filed a federal suit against the state of California in October 2017, arguing an increase in whale entanglements in the Dungeness crab fishery violated the Endangered Species Act.

The spike in whale entanglements from 2015 to 2017 has been attributed to climate change and an extreme marine heatwave that caused ecosystem shifts and habitat compression.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

In the fight to save the vaquita, conservationists take on cartels

February 17, 2021 — From above, the Sea of Cortez is a picture of serenity: turquoise waters lapping against rose-tinted bluffs and soft sand beaches. But down below, beneath the water’s surface, a war is raging.

Each year, typically between late November and May, huge gillnets — some stretching more than 600 meters (2,000 feet), or the length of five and a half football fields — are dropped into the waters to catch totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi). This critically endangered species is illegally fished for its prized swim bladders, which can fetch prices between $20,000 and $80,000 per kilo in China. While gillnets are highly effective at catching totoaba, they also catch just about everything else, including another critically endangered species: the vaquita (Phocoena sinus).

The vaquita is a bathtub-sized porpoise with silvery-gray skin and panda-like eyes that lives exclusively in a small section of the northern Gulf of California, close to the town of San Felipe in Baja California, Mexico. Right now, experts say there may only be about nine vaquitas left, despite the Mexican government spending more than $100 million to aid its recovery.

“The vaquita issue, in my opinion, is an example of epic, epic failure of conservation,” Andrea Crosta, executive director of Earth League International (ELI), an NGO that investigates wildlife crime, told Mongabay in an interview. “I don’t think rhinos and elephants combined have $100 million … and yet the vaquitas went from a few hundred individuals to … nobody knows how many now. Probably 12, 10, maybe less.”

But Crosta says it’s not the fishers deploying the gillnets that are the biggest threat to the vaquitas — it’s the people organizing the illegal trade of totoabas behind the scenes. They’re the ones placing the gillnets into the fishermen’s hands, he said.

Read the full story at Mongabay

PFMC: Notice of availability: Review of 2020 Ocean Salmon Fisheries

February 17, 2021 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Salmon Technical Team and staff of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) have prepared this stock assessment and fishery evaluation document as a postseason review of the 2020 ocean salmon fisheries off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California to help assess Council salmon fishery management performance, the status of Council area salmon stocks, and the socioeconomic impacts of salmon fisheries. The Council will formally review this report at its March 2021 meeting prior to the development of management alternatives for the approaching fishing season.

Please visit the Council’s website to get the Review of 2020 Ocean Salmon Fisheries (Published February 2021).

For further information:

US West Coast salmon fishermen recorded lackluster 2020 seasons

February 12, 2021 — Last year went down as one of the most lackluster seasons in history for salmon fishermen on the U.S. West Coast.

Regional fishermen landed 6.33 million pounds of kings, silvers, and chums in 2020, down by almost half of the 11.05 million pounds the three West Coast states landed in 2019, according to data from PacFIN, and a fraction of the 56.16 million pounds in the record-setting year of 2013.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

CALIFORNIA: Spiny lobster comes back to San Diego

February 11, 2021 — “It started with rumors, said Pete Halmay, seasoned urchin diver and president of San Diego Fishermen’s Working Group. At seventy-something, he’s still out getting salty almost every day. Two or three months before spiny lobster season was set to open in early October, Halmay said, talk on the docks was that Asia wasn’t buying this year, demand was way down due to covid-19, and the price San Diego fishermen would get for spiny lobster would be 30-50 percent of the norm. In a typical year, 95 percent of spiny lobster caught in San Diego goes to overseas markets, primarily Asia.

Coveted for its resemblance to a dragon, California spiny lobster is a lucky dish for Lunar New Year and is served at weddings and large get-togethers. Covid-19 crashed those parties in late 2019 and throughout 2020. Spiny lobster prices crashed too. President Trump’s trade war with China and the retaliatory tariffs didn’t help. The rumored price prior to the season opening was $8 per pound, down from the 2019 average of about $20 and 2015’s high near $30. California Department of Fish and Wildlife data showed that spiny lobster was the most profitable local catch at $3.8 million in 2017. In 2018, it brought in $3 million, beating out bigeye tuna. When the pandemic started in China in late 2019, it coincided with the height of legal spiny lobster season in California. Sales in 2019 dropped to $1.8 million. Among San Diego’s top-grossing seafoods, spiny lobster saw the biggest decline. Said Halmay, “They [local fishermen] got together and decided, ‘We can’t make a living off that. Let’s do something about it.’”

Seafood typically changes hands four or five times before reaching the consumer. In San Diego, fishermen sell off the dock to whomever is buying at the highest price, and they have no control over the “chain of custody” after that. “We know one up and one down, where it comes from and who buys it. We don’t really know for sure where it goes after that.”

Read the full story at the San Diego Reader

West Coast lawmakers try again for drilling ban

February 10, 2021 — U.S. senators from the West Coast, looking to build on the Biden administration’s pause on new offshore oil leases, are again pushing for a ban on drilling off Washington, Oregon and California.

At the end of January Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both D-Wash., introduced the “West Coast Ocean Protection Act” to permanently ban offshore drilling in federal waters off the West Coast. Cantwell is a senior member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and in a position to push the measure there.

Murray and Cantwell say their intent is to make permanent an existing moratorium on drill leasing in those federal waters, to prevent a repeat of the Trump administration’s attempt to reopen them for oil and gas exploration.

“The Pacific Ocean provides vital natural resources for Washington state, and offshore drilling puts everything from local jobs and ecosystems at risk,” Murray said in a Jan. 29 joint statement with Cantwell. “We need this permanent ban to safeguard our coastal environment and our state’s economy, including fisheries, outdoor recreation, and so much more.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

CAPITO, FEINSTEIN REINTRODUCE BILL TO PROTECT WHALES, DOLPHINS, SEA TURTLES FROM DRIFT GILLNETS

February 9, 2021 — The following was released by The Office of Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV):

U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), today reintroduced the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act, a bipartisan bill to phase out harmful large mesh drift gillnets used in federal waters off the coast of California – the only place the nets are still used in the United States.

Large mesh drift gillnets, which are between a mile and a mile-and-a-half long and can extend 200 feet below the ocean surface, are left in the ocean overnight to catch swordfish and thresher sharks. However, at least 60 other marine species, including whales, dolphins, sea lions, sea turtles, fish and sharks, can also become entangled in the large mesh net “walls,” injuring or killing them. Most of these animals, referred to as bycatch, are then discarded. The use of large mesh drift gillnets by a single fishery based in California is responsible for 90 percent of the dolphins and porpoises killed along the West Coast and Alaska.

“While the use of driftnets is already prohibited off the coasts of most states, these tools are still injuring or killing a whole host of marine animals off California’s coast,” Senator Capito said. “I’m proud to reintroduce this bipartisan legislation that will help ensure large mesh driftnets are no longer used in any U.S. waters, protecting our marine wildlife from this harmful practice.”

“Let’s be clear: the Senate unanimously passed our bill and the House passed it shortly thereafter. There is no support to continue using these deadly nets in our waters,” Senator Feinstein said. “Large mesh driftnets indiscriminately kill whales, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles and other marine animals. It’s time to transition the industry to more efficient, sustainable and profitable methods. Real-time data shows other fishing gear is more successful, profitable and sustainable. Now that we have a new administration, I’m hopeful that Congress will quickly pass our bill and we can begin to phase driftnets out.”

The bill would phase out the use of the nets and help the industry transition to more sustainable methods like deep-set buoy gear that uses a hook-and-buoy system. Deep-set buoy gear attracts swordfish with bait and alerts fishermen immediately when a bite is detected. Testing has shown that as much as 98 percent of animals caught with deep-set buoys are actually swordfish, resulting in far less bycatch than large mesh drift gillnets, which average a 50 percent catch rate of target species.

A seven-year study by the Pfleger Institute of Environmental Research found that fishing vessels using the new deep-set buoy gear caught 83 percent more swordfish than those using traditional large mesh drift gillnets. Also, because vessels are alerted as soon as there is a bite, swordfish are transported to markets faster than with large mesh drift gillnets, resulting in higher-quality products that bring a higher price.