Saving Seafood

Why climate change could mean more disease for marine aquaculture

April 15, 2019 — Extreme weather events and changing ocean conditions are creating unpredictable outcomes for aquaculture. One area where research is offering some insight into what to expect, though, is the increasing incidences of disease.

Anyone who was in France in the summer of 2018 can attest to the searing temperatures that swept the country. From north to south, the nation experienced the second hottest summer since records began. Whilst children played in lakes and the sea to cool off, the shellfish producers of Étang de Thau could only watch as their oysters and mussels perished at the hands of malaïgue – a period of sustained high temperatures and little wind.

The ocean has always been a highly dynamic environment, with its ever-changing conditions presenting challenges to aquaculturalists. However, thanks to human-induced climate change and continuing carbon emissions, events like malaïgue may become more regular occurrences, bringing with them new disease-related challenges.

As every aquaculturalist knows, temperature plays a major role in the growth and health of aquatic species. Certainly, higher temperatures are typically related to higher energetic requirements and demand for food. In an interesting twist, finfish can find their hunger suppressed when held at the upper end of their thermal tolerance for too long – even though their metabolic demands continue to rise. Malnourished fish make for unhealthy fish, which makes for a more stressed and susceptible animal.

Temperature doesn’t just impact farmed animals. As work from Dr Tommy Leung, a parasitologist at the University of New England in Australia has shown, temperature also appears to have a relationship with the severity and duration of disease outbreaks. “If you are in a more temperate region, you might have an outbreak where half of your stock die whereas in the tropics you have over 90 percent dying,” Leung explained. To compound the problem, outbreaks in those warmer tropical and near-tropical regions also happen over a much shorter period. “This means you could have less time to respond to any potential outbreak.”

Read the full story at The Fish Site

Lawmakers propose new funding to study Oregon’s warming ocean, threats to fishing industry

April 10, 2019 — The Pacific Ocean off Oregon has been ground zero for the impacts of climate change, beginning with a 2007 crisis in the state’s oyster industry.

Since then, acidification and hypoxia events off Oregon’s coast have been increasing, scientists say.

Now, state lawmakers are weighing a bill aimed at understanding and countering those impacts, which have the potential to decimate the state’s crab, shrimp, and shellfish industries.

Senate Bill 260 would allocate $1.9 million from the state general fund toward various projects to monitor and respond to a warming Pacific.

Read the full story at the Salem Statesman Journal

State of Alaska petitions federal government to delist Arctic ringed seals under the Endangered Species Act

April 9, 2019 — In the latest chapter of an ongoing debate over the status of Arctic ringed seals, the state of Alaska has petitioned the federal government to take the seals off the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

Ringed seals were added to the list back in 2012 because their sea ice habitat is expected to decline significantly in the coming years as the Arctic warms. A species can be designated “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act if it’s likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future through much of its range.

But in its petition, the state says that new research and re-analysis of prior data shows that ringed seals are doing well despite documented sea ice loss, and are likely to adapt to changing habitat conditions.

“They’re the most abundant marine mammal in the Arctic, there’s millions of them, and they’re a very resilient marine mammal as far as we can tell,” said Chris Krenz, the wildlife science coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Krenz said that the “threatened” designation could create hindrances for oil and gas development, as well as for subsistence hunters.

Three North Slope entities are listed as partners in the state’s petition: the North Slope Borough, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, and the Iñupiat Community of the Arctic Slope.

Subsistence hunting is generally exempt from restrictions under the Endangered Species Act, although the government can put regulations in place if they find that a hunt materially and negatively affects a species protected by the act. There are currently no such regulations for ringed seals, and federal government officials say there are no plans to put any in place.

Read the full story at KTOO

NEW JERSEY: Whales in the bay? It’s rare, but happening thanks to a surge in these fish off Cape May

April 9, 2019 — Jeff Stewart clearly remembers one of the last times humpback whales descended on the Delaware Bay.

It was 1990 and there was an abundance of bunker in the waters, a type of forage fish that whales eat that are also called menhaden, said Stewart, captain of the Cape May Whale Watcher.

Those same conditions are bringing the cetaceans to the bays from Town Bank to Cape May Point yet again, he said.

Marine biologists say a combination of warming waters and an increasing bunker population in the south is bringing more of the fish to New Jersey’s coast — and in turn luring whales to bay habitats they normally don’t swim in.

“There’s a ton of (bunker) right now. I’d definitely say it’s above average, to see it this early and in these quantities,” Stewart said.

Typically, the whales are found 20 miles offshore in the ocean, Stewart said, but last week, one of his captains spotted a humpback whale in the bay about 1½ miles off Cape May’s coast. Another was found in the bay Sunday morning about 100 yards out.

The tour agency, founded in 1993, started taking people out to sea again for the season last month. Stewart said more bottlenose dolphins are also in the waters as a result of increased bunker.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

North Carolina fishermen getting $11.6 million in Hurricane Florence relief funding

April 8, 2019 — North Carolina commercial fishermen will soon get a second round of checks as part of $11.6 million being distributed by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries under the Hurricane Florence Commercial Fishing Assistance Program.

For this round, 1,002 checks totaling $7,231,500 are going to fishermen to help compensate for October and November harvest reductions due to Hurricane Florence.

“When the storm hit, coastal communities suffered tremendous damage to homes, businesses, schools and their entire economy,” Governor Cooper said. “Helping the commercial fishing industry recover is critical for the people and places who rely on it for their livelihood, and these funds are an important boost.”

The program is designed to help make up for losses to the state’s nearly billion-dollar commercial fishing industry due to the storm and is part of a package of Hurricane Florence relief efforts Governor Cooper signed into law on December 3, 2018.

The first round of checks to fisherman went out in February and included 678 checks totaling more than $3.2 million to help compensate fishermen for reductions in the September harvest.

Distribution of the money is based on reported commercial fishing landings in September, October, and November 2018 as compared to the same months in 2015, 2016, 2017. The state collects records of all marine fish and shellfish sold at North Carolina docks.

Read the full story at WNCT

First ever high-seas conservation treaty would protect life in international waters

April 4, 2019 — No flag can claim the high seas, but many nations exploit them. As a result, life in the two-thirds of the oceans beyond any country’s territorial waters faces many threats that are largely unregulated, including overfishing and the emerging deep-sea mining industry.

Now, nations are negotiating the first-ever high-seas conservation treaty, which the United Nations expects to finalize next year. As delegates met this week at U.N. headquarters in New York City to hash out the details, marine scientists moved to influence the outcome. One research group unveiled the results of a global mapping effort that envisions expansive new marine reserves to protect key high-seas ecosystems. Other teams are working on maps of their own using powerful modeling tools to weigh a reserve’s potential for achieving key conservation goals, such as protecting important feeding grounds or helping sea life adapt to warming seas, against its economic costs.

“The policy opportunity this represents is much rarer than once in a lifetime,” says marine ecologist Douglas McCauley of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nations are asking “how we should protect two-thirds of the world’s oceans, [and] it’s the first time in human history that this has ever been asked.”

Read the full story at Science Magazine

Chesapeake Bay Shows Signs Of Health, Despite Historic Rains And Climate Change

April 3, 2019 — There’s good news for the Chesapeake Bay this year. Underwater grasses are at the highest level on record — an important sign of water quality. Blue crabs are being harvested at a sustainable level — meaning there are enough to feed hungry Marylanders while still leaving plenty in the water to reproduce. More than a million acres of land in the Chesapeake watershed have been permanently protected from development since 2010 — preventing the polluted runoff associated with building houses, roads and shopping centers.

The latest barometer of the Chesapeake’s health, released today, shows that by many indicators, the bay is on track to reach restoration goals. Those goals were set by a 2014 agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency and the six states (plus D.C.!) that make up the watershed. The region is supposed to meet the goals by 2025.

“Over the last year, we’ve seen records broken,” said Dana Aunkst, director of the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program, which released the annual report. He cited the record 100,000-acres-plus of underwater grasses in the bay — the most, since records began 30 years ago. He also pointed to data showing overall water quality at its highest level recorded.

But by some metrics there is a long ways to go toward full restoration, according to the report. Plus, there are factors working against bay restoration. Top among them: climate change. For the first time, the bay barometer report includes a section on climate.

Read the full story at WAMU

 

Could Prize-Based Competitions Help Pacific Northwest Shellfish Cope With Acidic Seawater?

April 1, 2019 — As human activities continue to add greenhouse gases to the planet’s atmosphere, the oceans absorb nearly one-third of all CO2 emissions. Through a series of chemical reactions, increasing CO2 levels in the ocean have caused seawater to become 30% more acidic over the past century. This process, termed “ocean acidification“,  can disrupt animals’ abilities to smell, regulate their metabolism, and build their shells.

The Pacific Northwest region of the United States, where many economically and culturally valuable fisheries and shellfish farms exist, is especially vulnerable to ocean acidification. The shoreline that stretches from northern California to Alaska is the final destination for globally circulating seawater that accumulates nearly 1,000 years worth of CO2 from the respiration and decomposition of flora and fauna. Seasonal “upwelling” of these millennium-aged deep sea waters and additional CO2 from human activities makes them particularly acidic. Thus, understanding how these acidic waters affect the $220 million Dungeness crab fishery and the $9.4 billion mussel, clam and oyster farming industries in Washington (among many other potentially susceptible operations) is becoming increasingly urgent.

Earlier this week, four United States Congressmembers from Washington, Oregon and Alaska reintroduced a bill called the “Ocean Acidification Innovation Act”. Just like its predecessor from 2017, this bill would allow federal agencies to run prize-based competitions that would increase capacity for studying ocean acidification and mitigating its impacts.

“Our coastal communities depend on a healthy shellfish and fishing industry,” says one of the bill’s co-sponsors Rep. Herrera Beutler (WA-3), while another co-sponsor, Rep. Derek Kilmer (WA-6) added, “There are generations of folks in our coastal communities who have worked in fishing and shellfish growing, but that’s endangered if we don’t maintain a healthy Pacific Ocean.”

Read the full story at Forbes

New England seeing a huge spike in beached sea turtles

March 28, 2019 — At a sea turtle hospital housed at an old New England shipyard, a biologist leans over a table and uses a needle to draw blood from a sick loggerhead before tagging its flailing flipper.

These were the first tentative steps toward a return to the ocean for this juvenile nicknamed Honey Bun and hundreds of other loggerhead, Kemp’s ridley and green turtles stranded this winter on Cape Cod beaches.

The number of warm water turtles stuck on beaches here has risen dramatically in the past decade, according to the Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. This year, volunteers recovered 829 helpless turtles washed up on the sand — about half of them dead including some frozen solid. That’s nearly twice what they found in 2016 and 10 times more than in 2008.

Cape Cod is believed to have one of the largest annual turtle strandings in the world. There are occasional strandings in Florida, Texas and as far north as the Chesapeake Bay. But those tend to be isolated events connected to cold snaps involving a few dozen to a couple of thousand turtles.

Some experts think New England’s spike in cold-stunned turtles is a climate change story with a twist: the hook-like projection of Cape Cod into the Atlantic helps trap turtles drawn there by warming waters but weakened when the ocean cools down. Most rescued turtles suffer from compromised immune systems and pneumonia due to hypothermia. Exposed to cold water for prolonged periods, they become lethargic and can’t move or eat. The ones that survive take months to recover.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

How Cities Can Protect Themselves from Rising Waters

March 28, 2019 — Across the U.S., policymakers are scrambling to protect their communities from the effects of climate change.

In January, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker proposed real-estate tax increases to fund dam and drainage system upgrades, which would help residents cope with future floods and storms. Meanwhile, a few months earlier, officials from several Florida counties agreed to work together to minimize the damage caused by rising sea levels.

Adaptation efforts like these are crucial. Four in 10 Americans live in coastal areas. and this population will surge in the coming years. Sustained flooding can cripple homes and infrastructure like roads, bridges, subways and wastewater treatment plants.

Policymakers have limited time and resources, so they should rely on the latest computer modeling and other technologies to identify and implement the most efficient adaptation strategies.

Rising water levels have already wrought havoc across the country. From 2000 to 2015, coastal “sunny day flooding,” or flooding caused by high tides rather than storms, more than doubled on the Southeast’s Atlantic coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. And it increased 75 percent on the Northeast’s coast.

Climate change is also making storms more destructive and frequent by heating up ocean waters, increasing flooding. The United States experienced its most expensive hurricane season in history in 2017; storms caused more than $300 billion in damages. Flooding and other damage from Hurricane Harvey alone forced 37,000 Texans into shelters in September 2017. Last year, Hurricane Michael caused at least 45 deaths and more than $12 billion in losses.

Read the full story at Scientific American