Saving Seafood

Scientists: Warming Ocean Factor in Collapse of Cod Fishery

October 29, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The rapid warming of waters off New England is a key factor in the collapse of the region’s cod fishery, and changes to the species’ management are needed to save one of America’s oldest industries, according to a report published Thursday in Science magazine.

Fishery managers say cod spawning in the Gulf of Maine — a key fishing area between Cape Cod and Canada that touches Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire — is only about 3 percent of sustainable levels, and participants in the fishery that dates to the Colonial era face dramatic quota cuts as a result.

The scientists behind the Science report say the warming of the Gulf of Maine, which accelerated from 2004 to 2013, reduced cod’s capacity to rebound from fishing pressure. The report gives credence to the idea — supported by advocacy groups, fishing managers and even some fishermen — that climate change has played a role in cod’s collapse.

The lead author of the study, Andrew Pershing of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, said the gulf is warming at a rate 99 percent faster than anywhere else in the world, and as a result, too many of the fish aren’t living past age 4 or 5. Cod can live to be older than 20.

“Every animal has a temperature range that they prefer. The Gulf of Maine, for cod, is really at the warm end of that,” Pershing said. “If you warm it, you push it somewhere that’s really uncomfortable.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Cod Could Recover in Warming Waters

October 28, 2015 — The first clue came in 2008, recalled George Rose, a marine biologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland, when he saw the cod aggregating in large numbers offshore during the spawning season. It was a sight he had sorely missed in 15 years. In the early 1990s, cod fisheries suffered such a dramatic collapse that they emerged as an aquatic poster child for fisheries mismanagement, according to Rose.

In a paper published yesterday in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Rose and his colleague, Sherrylynn Rowe, document the comeback of the Atlantic cod off Newfoundland and Labrador over the past decade. The fact that they have shown that the cod stock there is on the way to recovery is good news, Rose said, as “it shows that it is not all gloom and doom.”

Their study attributed the recovery to improved environmental conditions, better fish management and the availability of an important food source, capelin, whose populations also fell drastically in the early 1990s and have recently bounced back, too. The rebound of Atlantic cod in this region contrasts with their rapidly declining populations off the northeastern coast of the United States, where until last year the stocks remained significantly below sustainable levels. Previous research has associated this persistent population slump with the pressures of overfishing and also warming waters. The warming temperatures, however, seem to be favoring a cod fishery revival in Newfoundland and Labrador, or at least not hampering its recovery.

Read the full story at Scientific American 

 

Fish Success Story: Cod Makes a Comeback

October 27, 2015 — The cod is coming back.

The species that was for centuries a mainstay of the American and Canadian economies had virtually vanished off the Northeastern North American coast by the 1990s owing to overfishing. That led regulators in 1992 to impose a moratorium on cod fishing.

It appears to have worked.

New research shows that cod biomass has increased from the tens of tons to more than 200,000 tons within the last decade. This spring, scientists documented large increases in cod abundance and size for the first time since the moratorium in the more northerly spawning groups, according to a study published Monday in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

“Cod was historically one of the most important fish stocks in the world,” said George Rose, director of the Center for Fisheries Ecosystems Research at the University of Newfoundland in Canada and author of the new report on the cod’s recovery. “When the stocks collapsed in the 1990s, it became the icon of all the bad things we are doing to the ocean, and in many ways, it changed how we deal with our oceans worldwide.”

Read the full story at TakePart

Canadian eel tracked on 2,400-kilometre migration to Sargasso Sea

October 27, 2015 — It’s a mystery that has puzzled scientists for a century — how swarms of baby eels appear in the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda when adults have only been found in faraway places like Canada’s St. Lawrence River.

For the first time, Canadian researchers have tracked an adult female eel from Nova Scotia all the way to the northern edge of the Sargasso Sea with a satellite tracker — a 45-day journey of about 2,400 kilometres, described in a new paper published today in Nature Communications.

If they can confirm the path taken by that eel is the typical migration route used by Canadian eels, that may help scientists figure out measures that could be taken to conserve the endangered fish.

American eels, known by the scientific name Anguilla rostrata, are found in watersheds from Venezuela in the south to Greenland in the north, says Julian Dodson, a University of Laval researcher who co-authored the new paper.

In Canada, they historically lived throughout the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes, although their populations have fallen dramatically in the past 20 years, largely because of fishing and hydroelectric dams that they have trouble crossing.

Males typically live further south than females.

Read the full story at CBC News

The Great Northern Cod Comeback

October 27, 2015 — Once an icon of overfishing, mismanagement, and stock decline, the northern Atlantic cod is showing signs of recovery according to new research published today in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

This research, led by Dr. George Rose, tracks what is arguably the most important comeback of any fish stock worldwide. Studying the great northern Atlantic cod stock complex off Newfoundland and Labrador, once considered among the largest cod stocks in the world before its disastrous decline in the 1990s, Dr. Rose documents the stock’s rebound over the past decade from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand tonnes and growing.

Read the full story at Science Codex

 

Canadian government hinders scientists from talking about climate change

October 25, 2015 — Half of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem lies in Canada, where much of the water feeding the gulf and affecting its temperature comes from.

Getting information about scientific research relevant to the future of the ecosystem isn’t easy, however, because of the outgoing Canadian government’s controversial policies that have prevented government scientists from speaking freely with journalists, and sometimes from speaking at all.

While researching this six-part series on climate change in the gulf, the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram was repeatedly blocked from speaking to Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists by communications officers based in Halifax.

Multiple attempts to speak with a researcher based at the St. Andrews Biological Station here about temperature-driven changes in marine species distribution were blocked, even though scientific colleagues both inside and outside the institution said his work was relevant to the questions at hand. “Nobody is willing to talk about this topic at this time,” a DFO spokesman said in a voice-mail message.

Multiple requests to speak to John Loder, director of DFO’s Centre for Ocean Model Development and Application at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography near Halifax, about new sea surface temperature forecasts for the gulf were also denied by department spokespeople, who would only provide written answers to written questions about earlier results from 2013.

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

 

Casinos of Winnipeg commit to serving sustainable fish

WINNIPEG, Canada, October 5, 2015 – The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

Building on its commitment to sustainable sourcing, Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries today announced it has received Chain of Custody (CoC) certification from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to serve certified sustainable products at the Casinos of Winnipeg.  Guests at Club Regent Casino and McPhillips Station Casino now enjoy certified sustainable Manitoba-harvested pickerel (walleye) bearing the blue MSC label. This signifies the fish is from an environmentally responsible, well-managed fishery.

The first ever casinos to enter the MSC program join 3,050 companies and 270 fisheries worldwide that are contributing to making a difference on our waters by transforming our freshwater fish and seafood market to a sustainable basis. Opened in 1993, the Casinos of Winnipeg operate five restaurants and an entertainment centre, and serve 9,000 meals each week.

The pickerel is sourced from Waterhen Lake Fisheries, the first Canadian freshwater fishery to achieve MSC certification (in 2014) and only the fourth in the world. The fishery is operated by the Lake Waterhen Fishermen’s Association with continued support from the Chief and Council of Skownan First Nation, located in the Interlake Region of Manitoba.

“The Casinos of Winnipeg are demonstrating early support for a vital growth area in our province’s commercial fishery – that of an eco-certified catch,” said the Honourable Ron Lemieux, Minister Responsible for Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries. “Waterhen Lake is truly world-class in its eco-certification. Casino of Winnipeg guests are not only being served some of the best pickerel in the world, but they are ordering it in confidence that they are supporting healthy lakes and healthy communities.”

Local Waterhen Lake pickerel allows casino chefs to further their commitment to “Buy Manitoba” while providing Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries with an important tool in advancing the implementation of its sustainable procurement policy.

“The MSC applauds the commitment to sustainability demonstrated by the Government of Manitoba,”said Jay Lugar,MSC Program Director for Canada.“First through their support of the Waterhen Lake fishery certification, and now by completing the cycle of sustainable supply through the CoC certification for the casinos.”

The MSC program is widely recognized as the world’s most credible standard for wild-caught sustainable seafood and supply chain traceability. When a seafood product bears the MSC label this signals that the companies in every step of the chain – from the fishers, to the processors, to the distributors, restaurants and retailers – have achieved MSC certification from an independent certifier. This proven traceability mechanism assures consumers that from fishery to fork, their seafood can be traced back to an MSC certified fishery and that it has not been mixed or substituted for non-certified fish. Adding to its success in the ocean, use of the MSC Standard has been expanding to support not only healthier oceans but freshwater lakes and rivers as well.

 

Three fishermen dead after boat sinks off Vancouver Island

September 7, 2015 — A commercial fishing boat sank Saturday off the west coast of Vancouver Island, killing three of the four crew members.

The boat capsized and sank in the ocean about 55 kilometres west of Estevan Point, north of Tofino, said navy Lt. Nicole Murillo with the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre.

The Coast Guard was called out around 10 p.m. Saturday. Two men were discovered Sunday morning and confirmed dead, said Murillo, while the search continued into Sunday afternoon for a missing third crew member.

The missing man’s dead body was spotted by a helicopter and recovered around 2:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, Murillo said.

Read the full story at The Province

 

On Prince Edward Island, a Seafood-Dining Excursion

July 29, 2015 — PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND — “Which one should we try first?,” my husband asked, staring at the three equally enticing kinds of clams before us. The picturesque Gulf of St. Lawrence glistened on a sunny August evening on Prince Edward Island, Canada, and our 6-year-old daughter was running around on the grounds of the resort we were visiting for the afternoon called the Sundance Cottages.

But our attention was on the clams.

There was a raw quahog variety spiked with Tabasco and two soft-shell versions, one sautéed in oil and salted butter and the other puffing with an aromatic chorizo and white wine steam.

We had spent the better part of the afternoon on a beach nearby digging dozens of these shellfish from the sand and raking them from the water with the help of Stephen Flaherty, a handyman at Sundance who takes people clamming, including nonguests like us.

Finding them was only the start. Linda Lowther, a former owner of Sundance who offers cooking classes, had invited my husband and me into her home for a lesson on how islanders like to eat the mollusks, and now we were sitting at her kitchen table looking at the fruits of our half-day’s work.

It was one of several foraging trips we took during our summer break to the 175-mile-long, crescent-shaped province that’s famous for its picturesque setting of more than 90 beaches, rolling hills and sandstone cliffs and the abundant seafood in surrounding waters, including oysters, clams, cod, lobster and mussels. Agriculture, too, is big, with close to 1,500 mostly family-run farms growing a variety of produce and crops.

Restaurants were the obvious way to enjoy this bounty, but I had heard that the island was rife with opportunities to enjoy it through foraging, a tradition that locals practice. Given my primarily pescetarian diet, it was a particularly appealing proposition, and on our visit, we canvassed the area to find nearly everything we ate.

Read the full story at the New York Times