Saving Seafood

Wide-scale US wind power could cause significant warming

October 5, 2018 — It’s expanded 35-fold since 2000 and now provides 8% of the nation’s electricity. The US Department of Energy expects wind turbine capacity to more than quadruple again by 2050.

But a new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead. The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind power to clean up electricity systems.

The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24 ˚C. That could significantly exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation’s electricity sector this century, which would be around 0.1 ˚C.

“If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has—in some respects—more climate impact than coal or gas,” coauthor David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard, said in a statement. “If your perspective is the next thousand years, then wind power is enormously cleaner than coal or gas.”

Specifically, the “avoided warming” achieved by eliminating fossil-fuel sources could surpasses any warming from wind in about a century in the studied scenario, as emissions reductions accumulate.

Keith and lead author Lee Miller, a postdoc at Harvard, stress that the conclusions mean scientists and policymakers should take this side effect of wind power seriously—and carefully consider what role the resource should play in the shift to clean energy.

“Our analysis suggests that—where feasible—it may make sense to push a bit harder on developing solar power and a bit less hard on wind,” Keith said in an e-mail.

Notably, the warming effect from wind in the studied scenario was 10 times greater than the climate effect from solar farms, which can also have a tiny warming effect.

Read the full story at MIT Technology Review

Latest shrimp assessment points to closure of fishery

October 5, 2018 — The shrimp section of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted Thursday to accept the 2018 benchmark assessment for northern shrimp that continues to reflect a stock in free fall and facing a highly uncertain future.

The assessment seems to point to another closure for the fishery that has been shuttered since after the 2013 fishing season because of the dire and deteriorating state of the northern shrimp stock.

The final decision on whether to close the fishery for the sixth consecutive year will come in November, when the shrimp section and its advisory panel are scheduled to meet to set specifications for the 2019 fishing season.

It does not look good.

The assessment, according to the section, indicates the northern shrimp population remains severely depleted, spawning stock biomass remains at the same low levels that have existed since 2013 and recruitment of new shrimp into the fishery continues at historically low numbers.

It also underlines the negative impact of the Gulf of Maine’s warming waters on the northern shrimp stock.

“Warmer water temperatures are generally associated with lower recruitment indices and poorer survival during the first year of life,” the section said in a statement. “Ocean temperatures in the western Gulf of Maine shrimp habitat have increased over the past decade, and temperature is predicted to continue rising as a result of climate change. This suggests an increasingly inhospitable environment for northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Project to Clean Buzzards Bay Watershed Receives $420K in Grant Funding

October 4, 2018 — The Buzzards Bay Coalition has received nearly $420,000 in grant funding for its effort to expand wastewater treatment to more upper Buzzards Bay watershed communities.

The Southeast New England Program awarded the funding for the Coalition’s partnership that would reduce tens of thousands of pounds of nitrogen each year to help clean several waterways in the watershed that are on the state’s dirty waters list.

The project would expand wasterwater treatment to more upper Bay communities in Wareham, Bourne, Plymouth and Marion.

Wastewater, particularly from traditional home septic systems, is the largest source of nitrogen pollution to the bay.

Nitrogen pollution turns the water cloudy and murky and harms habitat for underwater species like fish, crabs, quahogs, and bay scallops.

The waterways of the upper portion of Buzzards Bay – the Agawam River and Wareham River,Buttermilk Bay and Little Buttermilk Bay, Sippican Harbor,Aucoot Cove, and the Weweantic River– make up one-third of the entire Buzzards Bay watershed. Every single one of these waterways is on the state’s “dirty waters” list.

The first phase of this project, funded with a SNEP grant in 2015, studied whether it would be feasible to move the discharge pipe from the narrow, upstream waters of the Agawam River to the site of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy’s existing wastewater treatment plant discharge pipe at the Cape Cod Canal. Through sound science, the project showed that relocating the Wareham discharge pipe would not harm the upper Bay’s health – in fact, it could reduce approximately 80,000 pounds of nitrogen to the Bay per year.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Eastern Maine Skippers event focuses on rapid changes in fishing industry

October 4, 2018 — Commercial fishing is one of Maine’s oldest industries. It is also facing rapid adjustments based on environmental changes and emerging technologies.

More than 100 Downeast area high school students gathered at the Schoodic Institute last week as part of the Eastern Maine Skippers Program to learn about these changes.

The event was the first of four “cohort” days for the program, in which students from the participating high schools meet one another, hear from industry leaders and begin shaping projects they will work on during the coming school year.

“This brings in kids from all these different communities and they get to know each other work together,” said Mike Thalhauser, a fisheries science and leadership advisor with the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

The Eastern Maine Skippers Program started in 2012. Since then it has expanded to over 120 students and nine schools. New this year is Sumner Memorial High School in Sullivan, which has eight students participating.

“The students will spend the next couple of months figuring out what they want to work on for the year,” said Sumner science teacher Morgan Forni, who is supervising the program at the school. “There’s a really broad range of interests for the students.

The theme for this year is technology. Over the course of the year students will look at how technology contributes to a safe and healthy fishing industry, to sustainable fishing practices, to a better future understanding of fisheries and to a thriving local fisheries economy.

In addition to the cohort meetings, participating students work on individual or group projects based on applying technology to a safe and sustainable fishing industry.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

US, Russia, China, others to sign agreement preventing illegal fishing in Arctic

October 3, 2018 — The United States is set to join nine other countries and organizations in a first-of-its kind agreement to protect Arctic Ocean waters from commercial fishing.

The pact, scheduled to be signed Wednesday, 3 October in Ilslissat, Greenland, comes after two years of negotiations between countries with coastlines on the Arctic as well as other major fishing powers. Those nations concluded talks last November.

The agreement comes as polar melting has reduced the Arctic ice cap and open new areas in the central part of the ocean for vessels. That means commercial fishing may be viable in those areas.

However, nine years ago, the U.S. closed its exclusive economic zone in the Arctic off the northern Alaskan coast to commercial fishing operations until government officials learned more about the region’s ecosystem. Alaska fishermen have expressed fears that the melting could lead to foreign vessels fishing in U.S. waters.

In a statement released 1 October, the U.S. State Department said the Greenland agreement cuts down chances of illegal fishing taking place in U.S. waters currently off limits to American fishermen.

Under terms of the agreement, the participating nations must create plan to study the Arctic’s ecosystem and not just for fishing purposes.

Michael Byers, an international law professor at the University of British Columbia, praised the countries for their forward thinking on the matter in a Canadian Press article.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New Study Shows Climate Change Could Reduce Scallop Population

October 3, 2018 — Researchers in Massachusetts say under the worst case scenario, climate change could reduce the scallop population by more than 50 percent in just a few decades, which could be bad news for New Bedford’s lucrative fishing port.

In 2016, commercial fishermen landed more than $300 million worth of fish at the Port of New Bedford, and 85 percent of that value came from scallops.

A new study from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows as carbon emissions in the atmosphere increase, so does the acidity in the ocean.

Jennie Rheuban, lead author of the report, said that could affect how well scallops can grow.

“Adults may actually be growing slower and calcifying less quickly under these acidified conditions because it’s more difficult for them to lay down calcium carbonate as a shell,” Rheuban said.

Rheuban said ocean acidification could also cause scallops to become more vulnerable.

“They aren’t able to swim quite as well when they’re experiencing acidified conditions, and so we hypothesize that under acidification, scallops may be more susceptible to predation,” she said.

Read the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio

‘Aquaculture’s Next Wave’ Explores How Maine Entrepreneurs Are Navigating Changing Seas

October 2, 2018 — This week we’re taking a deep dive into aquaculture and its potential to add real value to the state’s coastal economies. In “Aquaculture’s Next Wave” we will meet the innovators who are trying to take seafood farming to a new level in Maine.

Worldwide, aquaculture now provides more than half the world’s seafood. Yet here in the U.S. and in Maine, it’s far behind wild caught harvest. At the same time, we in the U.S. import roughly 90 percent of our seafood. For some investors and entrepreneurs, including Maine lobstermen, that spells opportunity.

Maine Public reporter Fred Bever spoke with Morning Edition host Irwin Gratz about aggressive exploration of new technologies and new markets for farmed seafood.

Gratz: Why is aquaculture important right now?

Bever: It’s because marine ecosystems and economies are being disrupted. Actively farming fish, shellfish, even seaweed — that can be a hedge against disruption and, long term, maybe the most profitable response. There’s a growing set of Maine visionaries who are pursuing that.

The planet’s oceans are always in flux and wild harvests have long been vulnerable to natural variation and overfishing, right?

Yes, but with the oceans warming, the dynamics are accelerating, and that’s nowhere more true than in the Gulf of Maine.

Scientists say the Gulf is warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, correct?

That’s almost a truism now. We’ve seen epic disruptions in recent decades — the crash of cod, fisheries for marine shrimp, for urchin and now herring are all restricted, lobster populations are making a slow march ever north and east following the warming trends.

Read the full story at Maine Public

New model looks at ocean acidification and sea scallop population drop

September 28, 2018 — Scientists at the University of Virginia and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have created a new model looking at ocean acidification.

According to a release, fishermen harvest more than $500 million worth of Atlantic sea scallops each year off the East Coast, but this model predicts those fisheries may be in danger.

It says, as the levels of carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere, the oceans become increasingly acidic, which could reduce the sea scallop population by more than 50 percent in the next 100 years, as a worst-case scenario.

The researchers say strong fisheries management and efforts to reduce CO2 emissions might slow or potentially even stop the trend.

“Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels pose a threat to many types of marine life, particularly shellfish,” said Scott Doney, an environmental sciences professor at UVA. “The ocean removes about a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans release to the atmosphere each year from fossil fuel use and deforestation. The resulting acidification of seawater makes it more difficult for shellfish like scallops and clams to build and maintain their shells.”

There are currently no studies that have been published showing the specific effects of ocean acidification on the Atlantic sea scallop, so to estimate the impact, Doney and his colleagues used a range of effects based on studies of related species.

The release says the new models lets scientists explore how plausible impacts of ocean acidification may change the future of the scallop population.

The researchers tested four different levels of impact on each of four different factors in the model, creating 256 different scenario combinations.

Read the full story at WCAV

WHOI Warns Sea Scallop Fisheries of Rises in Ocean Acidification

September 26, 2018 — More than $500 million worth of Atlantic sea scallops are harvested off the east coast of the United States.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), however, warn that fisheries bringing in this massive catch might be in danger because of carbon-dioxide levels increasing in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the upper oceans to become increasingly acidic.

“What’s novel about our work is that it brings together models of changing ocean environments as well as human responses. It combines socioeconomic decision making, ocean chemistry, atmospheric carbon dioxide, economic development and fisheries management, said the study’s lead author Jennie Rheuban.

“We tried to create a holistic view of how environmental changes might play out across different aspects of the sea scallop fishery.”

The scientists say the condition could reduce the sea scallop population by more than 50-percent within the next 30 to 80 years.

The predictions were made using a model created by WHOI scientists, which combines existing data and models of four major factors: future climate change scenarios, ocean acidification impacts, fisheries management policies, and fuel costs for commercial fishermen.

WHOI says that the ocean absorbs more than a quarter of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They say that the acidity caused by this can corrode the shells of clams, oysters, and scallops, and event prevent their larvae from forming shells at all.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Researchers Studying What Climate Change Could Mean for Fisheries in the Northeast

September 25, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Researchers with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center are studying warming ocean waters in an effort to understand what climate change could mean for “future stock conditions and the fisheries that depend on them.”

Congress recently provided the Northeast Fisheries Science Center with funding for a fisheries climate action plan that they released in 2016. Thanks to the funding, the Science Center now has 10 projects underway to “improve stock assessments through new modeling, better surveys, and more work to understand the vulnerabilities of coastal communities to climate change.”

The Science Center is working with fishermen, along with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, State University of New York Stony Brook, Rutgers University Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Research, Gulf of Maine Research Institute and Delaware Sea Grant.

A list of the stock assessment projects, survey projects, modeling projects and social science projects can be found here.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.