Saving Seafood

Study says ocean oscillation changes reduced shellfish landings

November 6, 2018 — For years, Maine shellfish harvesters have been complaining that there are fewer softshell clams while arguing that the diggers who go out on the mud flats aren’t the cause of the problem.

A recent study by researchers from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources backs them up on both counts.

According to Clyde L. MacKenzie Jr. of NOAA and Mitchell Tarnowski from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, between 1980 and 2010, documented landings of the four most commercially important inshore bivalve mollusks along the Northeast coast — eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams and northern bay scallops — dropped by 85 percent.

The principal cause, they say, was warming ocean temperatures associated with a shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation which resulted in damaged shellfish habitat and increased predation from Maine to North Carolina.

“My first response is that the article confirms what I have been seeing with soft-shell clams over at least the last decade or so,” Brian Beal, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine Machias and director of research at the Downeast Institute on Great Wass Island, said last week.

The North Atlantic Oscillation is a fluctuation of atmospheric pressure over the North Atlantic that affects both the weather and the climate along the East Coast, especially in winter and early spring.

According to NOAA, shifts in the oscillation can affect the timing of a species’ reproduction and growth, the availability of microscopic organisms for food and predator-prey relationships.

Over a period of several years, MacKenzie and Tarnowski interviewed shellfish wardens and harvesters along the New England coast, as well as examining landings records and other research in an effort to determine the “true causes” of the precipitous drop in shellfish landings.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Earth’s oceans may be way hotter than scientists realized — here’s how worried you should be

November 2, 2018 — The oceans are the world’s thankless, built-in air purifiers.

Over the past couple hundred years, as humans have burned coal, cleared forests, put gas-powered cars and trucks on the road, and run air conditioners and refrigerators, the oceans have been quietly gathering up most of the carbon emissions those activities spew into the air. They’ve also absorbed most of the excess heat that those gases have trapped on the planet.

Previous estimates suggested that the world’s oceans have collectively taken in more than 90% of the excess heat energy that our carbon emissions have kept on Earth.

But a new report published in the journal Nature on Wednesday suggests it’s worse than that. The research shows that scientists have been measuring the amount of heat in the oceans incorrectly, so the waters have actually absorbed far more heat than previously thought.

“If we think the ocean is warming more than we thought, it means the Earth is warming more than we thought, and that means the Earth is more sensitive to our emissions,” lead study author Laure Resplandy, an assistant professor of geosciences at Princeton, told Business Insider.

Scientists have long warned that we have to curb our reliance on fossil fuels to avoid a future of regular, catastrophic climate disasters. But Resplandy said the new findings in her report show that avoiding a future “Hothouse Earth” scenario will be even harder than anticipated. Specifically, that means it will be more challenging to avoid flooding from sea level rise in coastal cities, violent hurricanes, and the death of nearly all of Earth’s coral reefs.

Read the full story at MSN

 

Brad Warren & Julia Sanders: Washington’s Initiative 1631 will help fight ocean acidification

November 2, 2018 — We write today to announce our support for Washington’s Initiative 1631. As businesses who rely on healthy fisheries for a significant portion of our income, we believe this is a well-designed policy that offers us – and our customers – the best possible chance against an uncertain future fraught with the threats of changing ocean conditions.

It’s become clear that our fisheries need a lifeline. Here in Washington, we are experiencing the worst ocean acidification anywhere in the world. Research has firmly established the cause of this problem: emissions from burning coal, oil and gas mix into the ocean, altering its chemistry. The consequences loomed into headlines a decade ago when the oyster industry lost millions and nearly went out of business during the oyster seed crisis. Temporary and limited adaptation measures in hatcheries are keeping them in business, but in the rest of the oceans, fisheries that put dinner on billions of tables are at risk. Here in the Northwest, harvests are already being eroded and even shut down by the effects of unchecked carbon emissions.

The “warm blob,” an unprecedented marine heatwave off the West Coast, reached its height in 2015 and caused mass fatalities. In the Columbia River, a quarter-million salmon died. The largest recorded toxic algae bloom shut down the Dungeness crab fishery for months. The food web crashed, and marine creatures were spotted farther north than ever before. Sea surface temperatures never returned to their previous norm, and new research indicates another blob is forming.

Summers have become synonymous with a smoky haze from wildfires causing poor visibility and poor health – this summer the National Weather Service warned even healthy adults in some Washington areas to stay indoors due to hazardous air quality. At the same time, our iconic orca whales are starving from a lack of Chinook salmon. The Chinook in turn are suffering from a lack of the zooplankton that juveniles eat.

Research has made it clear that some of our most lucrative fisheries are vulnerable to ocean acidification: king crab, Dungeness crab, and salmon. Scientists also warm that combining stressors – like warming with ocean acidification – makes survival in the ocean all the more precarious.

Read the full op-ed at Seafood Source

 

Startling new research finds large buildup of heat in the oceans, suggesting a faster rate of global warming

November 1, 2018 — The world’s oceans have been soaking up far more excess heat in recent decades than scientists realized, suggesting that Earth could be set to warm even faster than predicted in the years ahead, according to new research published Wednesday.

Over the past quarter-century, Earth’s oceans have retained 60 percent more heat each year than scientists previously had thought, said Laure Resplandy, a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the startling study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The difference represents an enormous amount of additional energy, originating from the sun and trapped by Earth’s atmosphere — the yearly amount representing more than eight times the world’s annual energy consumption.

In the scientific realm, the new findings help resolve long-running doubts about the rate of the warming of the oceans before 2007, when reliable measurements from devices called “Argo floats” were put to use worldwide. Before that, differing types of temperature records — and an overall lack of them — contributed to murkiness about how quickly the oceans were heating up.

The higher-than-expected amount of heat in the oceans means more heat is being retained within Earth’s climate system each year, rather than escaping into space. In essence, more heat in the oceans signals that global warming is more advanced than scientists thought.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Ocean Shock: Lobster’s Great Migration Sets Up Boom and Bust

October 31, 2018 — STONINGTON, Maine — This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them.

A lobster tattoo covers Drew Eaton’s left forearm, its pincers snapping at dock lines connecting it to the American flag on his upper arm. The tattoo is about three-quarters done, but the 27-year-old is too busy with his new boat to finish it.

Eaton knows what people here in Stonington have been saying about how much the boat cost him.

“I’ve heard rumors all over town. Small town, everyone talks,” he says. “I’ve heard a million, two million.”

By the time he was in the third grade, Eaton was already lobstering here on Deer Isle in Downeast Maine. By the time he was in the eighth grade, he’d bought his first boat, a 20-footer, from a family friend. The latest one, a 46-footer built over the winter at a nearby boatyard, is his fourth.

Standing on the seawall after hauling lobster traps for about 12 hours on a foggy day this August, he says he’s making plenty of money to cover the boat loan. He’s unloaded 17 crates, each carrying 90 pounds of lobster, for a total haul of nearly $5,500. It’s a pretty typical day for him.

Eaton belongs to a new generation of Maine lobstermen that’s riding high, for now, on a sweet spot of climate change. Two generations ago, the entire New England coast had a thriving lobster industry. Today, lobster catches have collapsed in southern New England, and the only state with a significant harvest is north in Maine, where the seafood practically synonymous with the state has exploded.

The thriving crustaceans have created a kind of nautical gold rush, with some young lobstermen making well into six figures a year. But it’s a boom with a bust already written in its wake, and the lobstermen of the younger generation may well pay the highest price. Not only have they heavily mortgaged themselves with pricey custom boats in the rush for quick profits, they’ll also bear the brunt of climate change — not to mention the possible collapse of the lobstering industry in Maine as the creatures flourish ever northward.

Shifts by 85 percent of species

In the U.S. North Atlantic, fisheries data show that at least 85 percent of the nearly 70 federally tracked species have shifted north or deeper, or both, in recent years when compared with the norm over the past half-century. And the most dramatic of species shifts have occurred in the last 10 or 15 years.

Just in the last decade, for example, black sea bass have migrated up the East Coast into southern New England and are caught in the same traps that once caught lobsters. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, only 50 percent of lobster caught in the United States came from Maine. That started to shift in the 2000s, and this decade, nearly 85 percent of all lobster landings are in Maine.

Read the full story at VOA News

Some North Carolina seafood unsafe to eat after Hurricane Florence

October 26, 2018 — Some seafood caught in North Carolina may not be safe to eat in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.

Florence made landfall in Wrightsville Beach on Sept. 14. It was a Category 1 storm at landfall, and the storm moved extremely slowly–dumping dozens of inches of rain on many parts of North Carolina.

Florence dumped 8 trillion gallons of water on North Carolina. That’s enough to fill Falls Lake more than 70 times.

The influx of water turned creeks and streams into whitewater rapids that picked up everything in their paths.

The polluted runoff spilled into the Cape Fear River and Neuse River, then into the Pamlico Sound, and finally into the Atlantic Ocean.

The runoff forced North Carolina’s Department of Marine Fisheries to order a blanket ban on harvesting any shellfish off the coast. Months after the storm, miles of coastline remain off limits.

Wildlife most vulnerable to the pollution are filter feeders like clams, mussels and oysters.

Read the full story at ABC 11

Culinary community joining forces to help their fishermen friends affected by hurricanes

October 25, 2018 — In the wake of Hurricane Florence, North Carolina’s culinary and hospitality community has raised hundreds of thousands of relief dollars through a series of meals and events.

The latest aims to help North Carolina’s fishermen and shellfish growers impacted by the storm.

This Saturday, “Gone Fishing” will feature more than a dozen North Carolina chefs — including several James Beard nominees and winners — from Wilmington to Pittsboro at the new Junction West in Raleigh’s Warehouse District.

The event is organized by chefs Ashley Christensen of Poole’s, Jake Wood of 18 Seaboard and Locals Seafood, with proceeds going to the state’s fishermen and oyster and clam farmers affected by Hurricane Florence. The Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center is helping distribute the funds and will accept separate donations for North Carolina watermen.

Many of the participating chefs and restaurants focus on North Carolina seafood, including 18 Seaboard, Postmaster and The Cortez.

Read the full story at The News & Observer

MSC science director: Greater resolution needed in global fishing impact studies

October 25, 2018 — Michel Kaiser, the recently-appointed science and standards director at the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), has stressed the need for higher resolution data when estimating the global fishing footprint, in an opinion piece on the Conversation.

The discussion comes after the publication of a report in February which estimated that 55% of the planet’s oceans had been affected by fishing activities. However, Kaiser said this study, which was created from analysis of squares roughly 3000 square kilometers in area, produces a figure that is off by a factor of ten when compared to a more recent August study produced using higher resolution data (1-3 sq. km).

The MSC science director also noted a study published in October 2018 looking into the global footprint of bottom trawling. The paper looked at 24 regions of the global continental shelf, each analyzed using squares of less than 9 sq. km. The team, from the State University of New Jersey, discovered that 24% of the measured areas had been affected by bottom trawling, one of the most destructive fishing practices.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Hurricane Michael leaves long-term rebuild for Florida

October 23, 2018 — Hurricane Michael blew through the Florida panhandle nearly two weeks ago, but it appears the major storm will have long-lasting effects on the state’s commercial fishing industry.

The state’s shellfish industries were especially hard-hit, as the storm impacted areas known for clam and oyster beds.

T.J. Ward, whose family has worked in the shellfish business for five generations, said his aquaculture business “is done for at least a year or two” in an interview with WBUR radio in Boston.

“The damage in Apalachicola is the worst I’ve ever seen, and locals that are older than me and been through more hurricanes haven’t seen it this bad,” he said.

The impact to fisheries isn’t just to human structures, as the environment can be heavily impacted by flood waters changing the shape of the landscape.

“We won’t know how this system responds until after. When you look at catastrophic storms, very often they can shift baselines in systems,” Duane DeFreese, executive director of the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program, told Florida Today. “Completely over-wash the wetland, upland transitions, and then it takes some time for systems to recover. The commercial fishing impacts on this could be extreme.”

The effects also will be felt beyond the Gulf for at least one company.

According to The Seattle Times, Michael took a nearly-completed 261-foot trawler and ripped it from the shipyard’s mooring in Panama City, Florida. The ship, being built at Eastern Shipbuilding for Glacier Fish Co., was supposed to depart for Alaska in November and start processing groundfish.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Hurricane Michael leaves a seaside Florida town in an existential crisis

October 23, 2018 — For generations, families have come to Mexico Beach to soak up old-style Florida: the mom-and-pop seafood shacks, the dinky one-story motels and pastel bungalows, the retro ice cream parlor with claw machines and vintage arcade games.

But Hurricane Michael, which less than two weeks ago pummeled the tiny seaside town with 155-mph winds and demolished roughly three out of every four buildings, has left the community in an existential crisis. Nobody is sure what comes next.

Many residents and business owners, anticipating massive insurance shortfalls, have yet to decide whether to commit to the daunting challenge of rebuilding structures strong enough to withstand the next big storm.

About a third of the town’s 1,200 full-time residents are senior citizens. Many homes were not covered by flood insurance. A vast swath of older ranch-style homes and commercial structures sat at ground level and did not meet the state’s current elevation and windstorm requirements.

“They’re gonna make you build so heavy duty, you can’t afford to rebuild,” said Charles “Chuck” Smith, 56, owner of the Gulf View Motel, a modest 1940s-era building that his parents bought in the mid-1980s.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times