Saving Seafood

Woods Hole Report: Climate, weather and the economy

October 31, 2015 — The coastal ocean and its fisheries have played a huge role in the cultural and economic development of Cape Cod. Yet recent changes in the atmosphere and deep ocean threaten the natural rhythms that govern the ecosystems of the shallow waters surrounding Cape Cod.

One factor affecting the coastal ocean in the northeastern United States is a change in the motions of the atmospheric jet stream. We felt the effects during the past winter, which was exceptionally cold and snowy. In recent years, the north-south movements of the jet stream have been increasing. However, the eastward motion has been stalling, resulting in more persistent weather patterns – cold or warm – that affect the temperature distribution in the coastal ocean.

In early 2015, the jet stream dipped well southward of its normal position and stalled, bringing a steady burst of storms moving along the coast and cooling the coastal ocean. By contrast, the jet stream remained well north of its normal wintertime position in the winter of 2011-2012 so that warm air remained over New England for much of the winter. As a result, spring water temperatures were much warmer than usual, 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal over a six-month period, and as high as 10 degrees Fahrenheit for short time periods.

Research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found temperatures of continental shelf waters in 2012 off New England were the highest they’ve been in 150 years of measurements.

Read the full story at The Metrowest Daily News

 

 

Cape Cod: Playing tag with sharks

November 1, 2015 — CHATHAM, Mass. — The summer crowds and traffic on Main Street were down to a trickle. Leaves sifted onto lawns, and the birdsongs and rattle and hum of insect life were stilled for another year.

As the Aleutian Dream nudged past rolling breakers at the mouth of Chatham Harbor, the ocean told another story. Rippling V’s of migrating waterfowl filled the skies. All around the vessel, spouts from fin whales on their way to the West Indies, pausing to gorge themselves on sand eels, burst into the air like escaping jets of steam. The inky black backs of minke whales, likewise headed for equatorial regions, jackknifed as they dived on the eels below.

Notably absent were the great white sharks that seemed omnipresent at summer’s end, closing town beaches from Orleans up to Wellfleet as they cruised close to shore, occasionally beaching themselves in their pursuit of seals in Harwich, Chatham and Wellfleet.

But tagging data going back to 2010 showed that most great whites were gone from the Cape by mid- to late October.

“It’s only the big slobs hanging out now,” joked state Division of Marine Fisheries shark scientist Greg Skomal. In the summer, average sizes hovered around the 12- to 13-foot mark, but most of the sharks they had encountered this fall were to 14 to 15 feet long.

Perched on a pulpit, a narrow catwalk jutting forward from the bow of the Aleutian Dream, Skomal eased his back onto the hard aluminum rail and stretched his legs, waiting for word from above. Despite the bright sunshine and blue skies, wispy high cirrus clouds foretold of the coming storm that likely would end what had been a record-breaking shark-tagging season.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Times

Climate change hurting New England cod population, study says

October 29, 2015 — The rapid warming of the waters off New England has contributed to the historic collapse of the region’s cod population and has hampered its ability to rebound, according to a study that for the first time links climate change to the iconic species’ plummeting numbers.

Between 2004 and 2013, the mean surface temperature of the Gulf of Maine — extending from Cape Cod to Cape Sable in Nova Scotia — rose a remarkable 4 degrees, which the researchers attributed to shifts in the ocean currents caused by global warming.

The study, which was released Thursday by the journal Science, offers the latest evidence of climate change — this time, affecting a species once so plentiful that fishermen used to joke that they could walk across the Atlantic on the backs of cod.

Fisheries management officials have sharply limited cod fishing in hopes of protecting the species, but they estimate the number of cod remain at as little as 3 percent of what would sustain a healthy population. The limits, in turn, have hurt fishermen.

“Managers [of the fishery] kept reducing quotas, but the cod population kept declining,” said Andrew Pershing, the study’s lead author and chief scientific officer of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. “It turns out that warming waters were making the Gulf of Maine less hospitable for cod, and the management response was too slow to keep up with the changes.”

The institute had reported last year that the rise in temperatures in the Gulf of Maine exceeded those found in 99 percent of the world’s other large bodies of saltwater. The authors of Thursday’s study link the rapid warming to a northward shift in the Gulf Stream and changes to other major currents in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

They say the warmer water coursing into the Gulf of Maine has reduced the number of new cod and led to fewer fish surviving into adulthood. Cod prefer cold water, which is why they have thrived for centuries off New England.

The precise causes for the reduced spawning are unclear, the researchers said, but they’re likely to include a decline in the availability of food for young cod, increased stress, and more hospitable conditions for predators. Cod larvae are View Story eaten by many species, including dogfish and herring; larger cod are preyed upon by seals, whose numbers have increased markedly in the region.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Spiny dogfish gets a marketing makeover

October 27, 2015 — When Steve DeLeonardis, the owner of the Corner Store restaurants on Cape Cod, heard about the new FDA-approved name for spiny dogfish, he immediately created a new menu item — “SharkRito.”

“Cape shark” has been an alternative moniker for the Cape’s ubiquitous groundfish for some time, but it gained local popularity when the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance adopted it last year.

“We’re on the Cape, and there’s been all this buzz about the great whites down here,” said DeLeonardis, who operates restaurants in Orleans and Chatham.

“We have a younger, hip demo here that responds well to what we’re doing.”

He debuted the SharkRito at his Orleans location in mid-June and, despite the fact that the fish-filled burrito is available only on Fridays, he’s already selling 20 to 30 pounds a week.

The SharkRito is just the latest in ongoing efforts by New England seafood interests to expand the culinary taste of Americans. Their goal is to support the ecological management of aquatic life while stabilizing the income of fishermen and others who work in the field.

 

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

Climate Change a Pervasive Reality on Cape Cod

October 27, 2015 — What if climate change isn’t something that is going to happen in the distant future, somewhere far away? What if it’s happening right here, right now? That’s the question the Cape Cod Times is asking – and answering – all week in a special series on the local impacts of climate change, from shrinking beaches and disappearing lobsters to more aggressive storms.

Cape Cod Times reporter Doug Fraser has been covering Cape Cod since 1993, and photographer Steve Heaslip has been on the beat for thirty four years. Both say they’ve witnessed climate change with their own eyes, and relish every opportunity to shine a spotlight on the issue.

But the picture isn’t a pretty one. Consider:

  • Air temperatures have been rising rapidly. Changes in winter temperatures have been particularly dramatic, increasing an average of 1.3 degrees F per decade between 1970 and 2000. Summer temperatures have risen just half a degree per decade during that same time. Still, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, Massachusetts could see between 3 and 28 days over 100 degrees F by the year 2100; we currently see fewer than two such days.

Read the full story at WCAI

 

MAINE: Big changes are occurring in one of the fastest-warming spots on Earth

October 25, 2015 — Sandwiched on a narrow sandbar between Yarmouth’s harbor and the open Gulf of Maine, the fishermen of Yarmouth Bar have long struggled to keep the sea at bay.

Nineteenth-century storms threatened to sweep the whole place away, leaving Yarmouth proper’s harbor more open to the elements, prompting the province to build a granite cribwork across the quarter-mile bar, behind which the hamlet’s fishing fleet docks. Global warming has brought rising seas, a two-story-high rock wall to fight them and the hamlet’s designation as one of the communities in the province most threatened by climate change.

Now, snaking around the snout of Nova Scotia and into the Gulf of Maine is a new, unseen threat to Yarmouth Bar and hundreds of coastal communities in Maine, eastern New England and the Maritimes: currents fueling the rapid warming of the sea.

The Gulf of Maine – which extends from Cape Cod in Massachusetts to Cape Sable at the southern tip of Nova Scotia, and includes the Bay of Fundy, the offshore fishing banks, and the entire coast of Maine – has been warming rapidly as the deep-water currents that feed it have shifted. Since 2004 the gulf has warmed faster than anyplace else on the planet, except for an area northeast of Japan, and during the “Northwest Atlantic Ocean heat wave” of 2012 average water temperatures hit the highest level in the 150 years that humans have been recording them.

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

Changing coastal ocean affects Cape Cod economy

October 26, 2015 — The coastal ocean and its fisheries have played a huge role in the cultural and economic development of Cape Cod. Yet recent changes in the atmosphere and deep ocean threaten the natural rhythms that govern the ecosystems of the shallow waters surrounding Cape Cod.

One factor affecting the coastal ocean in the northeastern United States is a change in the motions of the atmospheric jet stream. We felt the effects during the past winter, which was exceptionally cold and snowy. In recent years, the north-south movements of the jet stream have been increasing. However, the eastward motion has been stalling, resulting in more persistent weather patterns — cold or warm — that affect the temperature distribution in the coastal ocean.

In early 2015, the jet stream dipped well southward of its normal position and stalled, bringing a steady burst of storms moving along the coast and cooling the coastal ocean. By contrast, the jet stream remained well north of its normal wintertime position in the winter of 2011-2012 so that warm air remained over New England for much of the winter. As a result, spring water temperatures were much warmer than usual, 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal over a six-month period, and as high as 10 degrees Fahrenheit for short time periods.

Research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found temperatures of continental shelf waters in 2012 off New England were the highest they’ve been in 150 years of measurements.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Providence Journal: Balance of Interests Needed on Proposed Atlantic Monument

October 12, 2015 — There is no escaping the tension that exists between protecting our environment and using our natural resources for the benefit of humankind.

Sometimes, the right steps are obvious, such as when we protect endangered species, or designate a stretch of majestic mountains as national forest or parklands. At other times, there can be strong opinions and interests on both sides, with some favoring protections and others favoring a hands-off approach.

Always, it is important to strike a balance — one that protects and preserves our resources without overlooking the need for humans to use those resources and provide for themselves. Indeed, establishing wise protections can improve our quality of life while preserving the resources that provide so many benefits.

Read the full editorial at Providence Journal 

 

Committee Pushes Back on Potential Marine Monument Designations

WASHINGTON — September 30, 2015 — Today, the Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans held an oversight hearing on the designations of Marine National Monuments, which are unilateral executive actions that usurp established regional fisheries management plans and impose significant economic and environmental impacts regionally and nationwide.

In particular, the hearing focused on the threat of Marine National Monument designations off Cape Cod in New England and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska under the Antiquities Act of 1906. President Obama has already expanded existing Marine National Monuments by more than 400,000 square miles, an area larger than the states of Texas and New Mexico combined.

Members and witnesses reviewed the utter lack of public input in prior unilateral monument designations and the adverse effects posed by potential future designations to America’s fisheries and the thousands of jobs supported by the seafood industry.

Read the full story from RealEstateRama

Cape Cod fleet hopes for financial aid

September 29, 2015 — The big “bin” of cash, doled out by Congress in September 2012, when they declared the New England groundfish fishery a disaster, is about to be emptied of the last nickels and dimes.

It wasn’t a hurricane or brutal snowstorm that caused the disaster, it was a lack of cod. Quotas for the Cape’s namesake fish were slashed 80 percent in the Gulf of Maine and 61 percent for Georges Bank.

A total of $32.8 million was set aside for the New England fishery, with $11 million reserved for future use and $14.6 million sent to Massachusetts for distribution.

“The first round was money distributed by the federal government to permit holders who caught 5,000 pounds of ground fish in either 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013,” explained Claire Fitzgerald, policy analyst for the Chatham-based Cape Cod Commercial Fisherman’s Alliance.
In round one (or bin one) $6.3 million of Massachusetts’ share of the award was parceled out to 194 ground fish permit holders who qualified; $32,463 apiece. Unfortunately, in the case of the Fisheries Alliance, less than half of the two dozen boats in their Fixed Gear Sector qualified.

Read the full story from The Cape Codder