Saving Seafood

Marine heatwaves are getting hotter, lasting longer and doing more damage

June 1, 2018 — On land, heatwaves can be deadly for humans and wildlife and can devastate crops and forests.

Unusually warm periods can also occur in the ocean. These can last for weeks or months, killing off kelp forests and corals, and producing other significant impacts on marine ecosystems, fishing and aquaculture industries.

Yet until recently, the formation, distribution and frequency of marine heatwaves had received little research attention.

Long-term change

Climate change is warming ocean waters and causing shifts in the distribution and abundance of seaweeds, corals, fish and other marine species. For example, tropical fish species are now commonly found in Sydney Harbour.

But these changes in ocean temperatures are not steady or even, and scientists have lacked the tools to define, synthesize and understand the global patterns of marine heatwaves and their biological impacts.

At a meeting in early 2015, we convened a group of scientists with expertise in atmospheric climatology, oceanography and ecology to form a marine heatwaves working group to develop a definition for the phenomenon: A prolonged period of unusually  at a particular location for that time of the year. Importantly, marine heatwaves can occur at any time of the year, summer or winter.

Read the full story at PHYS

 

Your dinner might be swimming North thanks to climate change, Rutgers study says

May 18, 2018 — Climate change is making oceans warmer and the fish are taking flight.

And that could have a big impact on New Jersey’s $7.9 billion fishing industry according to a new Rutgers-led study published Wednesday.

Aquatic life has a narrow tolerance for temperature range, so as the water heats up species populations are shifting northward to find suitable habitat according to Malin Pinksy, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor in Rutgers’ Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources.

By 2100, the Atlantic’s temperature off the Jersey Shore could rise to levels currently seen in Virginia. That could lead to species like black sea bass and summer flounder, both staples of New Jersey’s fishing industry, leaving the area and being replaced by more southern species like Atlantic Croaker.

Pinsky said the most dramatic example of a shifting fishery is the Atlantic Cod. The species could lose 90 percent of its habitat in U.S. waters by 2100 in a worst case scenario.

Read the full story at NJ

 

Warming Waters Push Fish To Cooler Climates, Out Of Some Fishermen’s Reach

May 17, 2018 — The oceans are getting warmer and fish are noticing. Many that live along U.S. coastlines are moving to cooler water. New research predicts that will continue, with potentially serious consequences for the fishing industry.

Fish can be as picky about their water temperature as Goldilocks was about her porridge. Ecologist Malin Pinsky of Rutgers University says a warming climate is heating up their coastal habitats. “Here in North American waters,” he says, “that means fish and other marine animals, their habitat is shifting further north quite rapidly.”

Pinsky studied 686 marine species ranging from bass and flounder to crab and lobster. He projected how much warmer oceans would get over the next 80 years, using various scenarios for emissions of greenhouse gases and the rate of global warming. Then he projected how fish species would probably react to that based on what they’ve been doing already. “And [with] about 450 of those,” he says, “we have high certainty in terms of how far they are going to shift in the future.”

Read the full story at NPR

 

Warming seas may scramble North America’s fishing industry

May 17, 2018 — Get ready, seafood lovers: Climate change may complicate efforts to net your catch of the day. That’s because warming seas will force many of North America’s most valuable fish and shellfish stocks north in coming decades, a major new modeling study finds, potentially creating headaches for the fishing industry and government regulators. Some species could see their ranges shrink by half, whereas others are poised to expand into vast new territories more than 1000 kilometers north of their current homes.

“Basically, climate change is forcing species to move, jumbling up ecosystems,” says ecologist Malin Pinsky of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher James Morley, now at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “That’s not necessarily bad news. But we’ve already seen that even much smaller shifts in the distribution of marine species can cause real economic disruption, political friction, and challenges to fisheries managers. And here we are talking about potentially big shifts.”

Researchers have already shown that on land and in the sea, plants and animals are shifting their ranges in response to rising global temperatures. Trees that thrive in warmer climates, for example, are spreading into areas where frigid winters once made survival impossible. And species that need cooler weather are retreating from areas that have become too warm.

Read the full story at Science Magazine

 

Why Alaska Is Crafting a Plan to Fight Climate Change: It’s Impossible to Ignore

May 15, 2018 — WASHINGTON — In the Trump era, it has mainly been blue states that have taken the lead on climate change policy, with liberal strongholds like California and New York setting ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, at least one deep-red state could soon join them: Alaska, a major oil and gas producer, is crafting its own plan to address climate change. Ideas under discussion include deep cuts in state emissions by 2025 and a tax on companies that emit carbon dioxide.

While many conservative-leaning states have resisted aggressive climate policies, Alaska is already seeing the dramatic effects of global warming firsthand, making the issue difficult for local politicians to ignore. The solid permafrost that sits beneath many roads, buildings and pipelines is starting to thaw, destabilizing the infrastructure above. At least 31 coastal towns and cities may need to relocate, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, as protective sea ice vanishes and fierce waves erode Alaska’s shores.

“Climate change is affecting Alaskans right now,” wrote Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott in a recent op-ed in the Juneau Empire. “To underestimate the risks or rate of climate change is to gamble with our children’s futures and that is not a bet that we are willing to make.”

The state is still finalizing its climate plan. In October, Governor Walker, a former Republican who won election as an independent in 2014, created a task force headed by Lieutenant Governor Mallott that would propose specific policies to reduce emissions and help the state adapt to the impacts of global warming. The recommendations are due by September.

Read the full story at the New York Times

 

MPAs will suffer, along with the rest of the ocean, as the planet warms

May 15, 2018 — A paper (Bruno et al. 2018) released last week in Nature Climate Change mapped the effects of future emissions on marine protected areas (MPAs) around the world. The results were unsurprising—climate change threatens every MPA (and indeed every part of the ocean), with a range of impacts. This study focused mainly on warming temperatures and changing oxygen levels, but anthropogenic stressors on the ocean also include ocean acidification, rising sea levels, more intense storms, distorted currents, and altered nutrient distribution.

To understand the paper, its conclusions, and any kind of positive takeaway (we get there at the end), an understanding of representative concentration pathways (RCP) is needed. An RCP is a scientifically backed estimate of radiative forcing (you can think of this as the amount of global warming) based on different emissions scenarios. Basically, an RCP estimates the amount of warming Earth will experience based on the amount of future emissions. It is important to note that RCPs are not climate models—they are scientifically standardized scenarios that can be used to set up models. The 4 recognized RCPs are: RCP 2.6, 4.5, 6, and 8.5.

In the paper, the authors model RCP 8.5, the worst-case scenario where politicians, governments and people don’t make meaningful change in the future. Predictably, the results are not good. In this scenario, temperatures inside (and outside) MPAs are expected to rise by an average of 0.035° C per year leading to “protected areas” that are at least 2° C (4.6° F) warmer by the end of the century.

Read the full story at Sustainable Fisheries UW

 

Study: Marine Protected Areas Won’t Matter

May 10, 2018 — New research from the University of North Carolina concludes that most marine life in marine protected areas will not be able to tolerate warming ocean temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

There are 8,236 marine protected areas around the world covering about four percent of the surface of the ocean. They have been established as a haven to protect threatened marine life, like polar bears, penguins and coral reefs, from the effects of fishing and other activities such as oil and gas extraction.

The study found that with continued “business-as-usual” emissions, the protections currently in place won’t matter, because by 2100, warming and reduced oxygen concentration will make marine protected areas uninhabitable by most species currently residing in those areas.

The study predicts that under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 emissions scenario, better known as the “business as usual scenario,” marine protected areas will warm by 2.8 degrees Celsius (or 5 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. Mean sea-surface temperatures within marine protected areas are projected to increase 0.034 degrees Celsius (or 0.061 degrees Fahrenheit) per year.

Read the full story at the Maritime Executive

 

Scientists: Climate change could punish fish habitats targeted for conservation

May 8, 2018 — Aquatic preserves created to protect sea life from Australia to the ocean off Mayport stand to lose huge numbers of fish as oceans warm in coming decades, researchers reported Monday.

The report in the journal Nature Climate Change concludes many of more than 8,000 places labeled as marine protected areas will be overtaken by effects of climate change without major reductions in carbon-dioxide releases worldwide.

“There has been a lot of talk about establishing marine reserves to buy time while we figure out how to confront climate change,” said Rich Aronson, a researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne who co-authored the report with seven other scientists. “We’re out of time and the fact is we already know what to do: We have to control greenhouse gas emissions.”

Marine protected areas have grown mostly unnoticed over a generation, spreading to include big chunks of Florida’s coastline. The Oculina Bank, for example, a stretch of deep coral reefs near Vero Beach, was just a “habitat area of particular concern” when the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council attached a label to it in 1984. Rules against anchoring and fishing for snapper and grouper were added in the 1990s, then in 2000 the size more than tripled and new restrictions were added.

Read the full story at the Florida Times-Union

 

Sens. King, Collins push for more research on ocean warming in Gulf of Maine

May 1, 2018 — U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King have urged the federal government to improve efforts to understand the causes and effects of the rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine, which threatens to disrupt Maine’s traditional fisheries and the ecosystem that supports them.

“We need greater resources, enhanced monitoring of subsurface conditions, and a better understanding of the diversity of factors that are simultaneously impacting the Gulf of Maine, from changes in circulation and water temperature to ocean acidification,” the senators wrote in a letter Monday to the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Tim Gallaudet.

“This effort is critical not just for Maine and New England states but for our country as a whole,” they added in the letter, which also called for greater cooperative research and monitoring efforts with Canada, which has sovereignty over the eastern half of the gulf. “Understanding the changes occurring in the Gulf of Maine with respect to warming ocean waters will allow us to better understand the impact to fisheries and benefit other waters similarly affected by climate change.”

Canadian scientists recently measured record-breaking temperatures in the deep water flowing into the principal oceanographic entrance to the Gulf of Maine – nearly 11 degrees above normal – and other researchers report warmer water has been intruding into some of the gulf’s deep-water basins. In a press release, the senators said their letter was prompted by an April 24 Press Herald story on these developments.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Bull Shark Nursery Grounds Shifting North, a Result of Climate Change

April 20, 2018 — The report published this week in Scientific Reports notes that while bull sharks have large migratory patterns and move quite a bit, they are very loyal to their nursery grounds.

Prior to this discovery, the most northerly known nurseries in the Atlantic were located off Florida’s east coast. In recent years, however, nurseries have been relocated north to the Pamlico Sound, which lies between the Outer Banks and North Carolina’s coast.

The discovery was a fluke, the researchers said.

While working to characterize shark habitat in North Carolina, the researchers from the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, Simon Fraser University and East Carolina University found that a greater number of juvenile bull sharks, which remain at nursery grounds during their formative years, were reported in the brackish waters of Pamlico Sound.

Read the full story at the Weather Channel