Saving Seafood

Study: Warming Gulf of Maine endangering lobster stock

January 24, 2018 — Is the lobster boom on the decline in the Gulf of Maine because of warming waters? A newly released study by a Maine-based marine research group suggests that is the case.

The study, released Monday by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, touched on many of the same climate issues that have left researchers and lobster stakeholders anxious about the future.

“In the Gulf of Maine, the lobster fishery is vulnerable to future temperature increases,” GMRI said in the statement released with the study. “The researchers’ population projections suggest that lobster productivity will decrease as temperatures continue to warm, but continued conservation efforts can mitigate the impacts of future warming.”

The study, compiled with the University of Maine and NOAA Fisheries, said the anticipated decline highlights the need for vigilant conservation within the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery, especially since scientists say the gulf’s waters are warming faster than 99 percent of the rest of the world’s oceans.

Researchers said they expect the lobster population to decline from recent highs — GMRI pegs the peak year at 2010, when it estimated the Gulf of Maine lobster stock contained 518 million lobsters — to levels more in keeping with traditional lobstering years.

It estimates the population could shrink to about 261 million lobsters in 2050.

“The 30-year outlook for the Gulf of Maine fishery looks positive if conservation practices continue,” GMRI said. “In their 30-year projection, the researchers anticipate average populations similar to those in the early 2000s.”

Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, said lobster stock assessments in the Gulf of Maine have shown the annual settlement of young lobsters — when they transition from floating in open waters as plankton to settling on the bottom to begin the seven- to eight-year stretch it requires to mature — has declined from previous assessments.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Dr. Malin Pinsky: Changing ocean temps and what they mean for fish and people

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — January 17, 2018 — Last Thursday, Dr. Malin Pinsky, a professor of ecology, evolution and natural resources at Rutgers University, gave a Bevan Series lecture on how fish have adapted to changing ocean temperatures, and the implications for fisheries and people. “Fish and Fisheries in Hot Water: (How) Do We Adapt?” was the second of ten planned lectures in the 2018 Bevan Series, which features experts discussing fishery and marine conservation issues. The series is hosted at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Read more about the Bevan Series here

Watch Dr. Pinsky’s lecture here

See more Saving Seafood coverage of the Bevan Series here

A description of Dr. Pinsky’s lecture is below:

The same ecological and evolutionary processes operate in marine and terrestrial environments, and yet ocean life thrives in a fluid environment that is dramatically different from what we experience in air. The ocean is, in effect, a 1.3 sextillion liter water bath with muted thermal variation through time and space and limited oxygen. In this talk, I will trace what I see as some of the important consequences for fish and fisheries, including a number of striking contrasts and similarities to patterns on land. Most marine animals have evolved narrow thermal tolerances and live close to their upper thermal limits, which makes them surprisingly sensitive to even small changes in temperature. I will show that fish and other marine animals have responded rapidly and often quite predictably to temperature change and temperature trends, across time-scales from seasons to decades. Finally, I will link these rapid ocean changes to their impacts on fisheries and on people. The tight feedbacks and lagged responses between fisheries and ocean dynamics create both immediate impacts and complex dynamics that can complicate management efforts. The magnitude and extent of climate impacts on fisheries imply the need for a new era of climate-ready management more fully informed by environmental dynamics and long-term trends.

Malin Pinsky, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in Ocean Sciences at Rutgers University. There, he leads a research group studying the ecology and evolution of global change in the ocean, including conservation and management solutions. He developed and maintains the OceanAdapt website to document shifting ocean animals in North America, a resource used by governments and NGOs for climate adaptation planning. He has published articles in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Biology, and other international journal, and his research has received extensive coverage in the press, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, CBC, and National Public Radio. He has received early career awards and fellowships from the National Academy of Sciences, American Society of Naturalists, and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Previously, he was a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow at Princeton University. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University, an A.B. from Williams College, and roots along the coast of Maine.

 

Maine: It’s shrimp season, but without the shrimp

December 27, 2017 — PORT CLYDE, Maine — Sitting between Glen Libby’s desk at Port Clyde Fresh Catch and the armchair where his brother’s old dog, Red, likes to nap are two boxes full of “The Original Maine Shrimp Cookbook.” This slim spiral-bound volume includes contributions from various members of the brothers’ immediate family, whose shrimping history dates back nearly four decades in this coastal town about two hours northeast of Portland.

Libby loves the small, delicate Northern shrimp, known fondly here as Maine shrimp, and so do customers at his processing and distribution plant. He bought $700 worth of the books to sell.

“I have sold two,” Libby said.

He is unlikely to sell many more. Not long after the cookbook was published in 2009, its central ingredient began vanishing from Maine’s waters. In 2014, regulators closed the shrimp fishery (the term that encompasses both the fishing grounds and those who work there). The hope was that the struggling species would replenish itself if left undisturbed.

So far, according to scientists who survey the Gulf of Maine annually, it has not. Their most recent data show Northern shrimp numbers at a historic low for the 34 years in which they have been counting the crustacean, Pandalus borealis. Egg production is down. Survival rates for larvae are poor.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

UNH: Climate change effects could accelerate by mid-century

December 15, 2017 — DURHAM, N.C. — Environmental models used by University of New Hampshire researchers are showing the effects of climate change could be much stronger by the middle of the 21st century, and a number of ecosystem and weather conditions could consistently decline even more in the future.

If carbon dioxide emissions continue at the current rate, they report scenarios of future conditions could not only lead to a significant decrease in snow days, but also an increase in the number of summer days over 90 degrees and a drastic decline in stream habitat with 40 percent not suitable for cold water fish.

The research, published recently in the journal Ecology and Society, used models bench marked to field measurements to evaluate the Merrimack River watershed in New Hampshire. They found that along with a decrease in snow cover in the winter, other potential impacts could include up to 70 hot summer days per year with temperatures of 90 degrees or more by the end of century, a greater probability of flooding, a considerable loss of cold water fish habitat, and accelerated nitrogen inputs to coastal areas which could lead to eutrophication, an abnormal amount of nutrients that can pollute the water and deplete fish species. Researchers say the biggest impact will be around urban areas.

Read the full story at the Portsmouth Herald

 

NOAA site aims to help fishing communities bounce back

November 24, 2017 — NOAA Fisheries has introduced a new website designed to help fishing communities be more resilient in the face of climate change, fluctuating fish stocks and even declines in waterfront infrastructure and economy.

The new website endeavor, introduced this week after almost three years of planning, is called Community Resilience in the Greater Atlantic Region.

“It really came out of the strategic plan we developed here in the regional office, which was the first one anywhere,” said Peter Burns of NOAA Fisheries in Gloucester. “One of the goals of that plan centered on building community resilience to help strengthen fishing communities.”

Working with NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, the community resilience working group — which included NOAA staffers from the West Coast, as well — began exploring ways to assist fishing communities in coping with regulatory, environmental and economic changes that challenge the very sustainability of fishing communities.

According to NOAA Fisheries’ own description of the endeavor, the resiliency strategy would provide information on “solutions to improve groundfish business practices and economic vitality,” as well as incorporating climate change, ocean acidification and ecosystem analysis into NOAA Fisheries’ activities.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Maine’s shrimp fishery unlikely to open in 2018

November 22, 2017 — The Maine shrimp fishery appears headed toward another closed season in 2018 based on bleak stock assessments made earlier this year, according to federal officials.

If a panel meeting next Wednesday in Portland agrees with the recommendations released this week, 2018 would be the fourth year the small but much-loved winter fishery is closed.

“It was not a good result for shrimp this year,” said Max Appelman, who coordinates the fishery for the federal regulatory body, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, that oversees the fishery.

Abundance of the species was at a 34-year low in 2017, according to the commission. During the annual summer scientific survey, data showed that survival of the shrimp that spawned in 2016 was the second lowest observed in the history of the survey, which began in the mid-1980s.

Climate change is the likeliest cause for the crash in the fishery; Northern shrimp, or pandalus borealis, require cold winter water to spawn. Waters in the Gulf of Maine, the southern most waters the shrimp can survive in, are warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

The environment for shrimp is increasingly “inhospitable,” according to the report.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Climate change, sparse policies endanger right whale population

November 8, 2017 — North Atlantic right whales – a highly endangered species making modest population gains in the past decade – may be imperiled by warming waters and insufficient international protection, according to a new Cornell University analysis published in Global Change Biology.

North Atlantic right whales’ preferred cuisine is copepods that thrive in cool waters, such as the Gulf of Maine, said author Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, who conducted the work as a doctoral student and postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Charles Greene, professor of oceanography and co-author on the paper.

Scientists once relied on continuous plankton sampling to track the copepods, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations’ National Marine Fisheries Service discontinued the program, preventing researchers from observing ecosystem changes as they occur.

Read the full story at Science Codex

 

Climate change preview? Pacific Ocean ‘blob’ appears to take toll on Alaska cod

November 4, 2017 — Gulf of Alaska cod populations appear to have nose-dived, a collapse fishery scientists believe is linked to warm water temperatures known as “the blob” that peaked in 2015.

The decline is expected to substantially reduce the Gulf cod harvests that in recent years have been worth — before processing — more than $50 million to Northwest and Alaska fishermen who catch them with nets, pot traps and baited hooks set along the sea bottom.

The blob also could foreshadow the effects of climate change on the marine ecosystem off Alaska’s coast, where chilly waters rich with food sustain North America’s richest fisheries.

Federal fisheries biologist Steve Barbeaux says that the warm water, which has spread to depths of more than 1,000 feet, hit the cod like a kind of double-whammy. Higher temperatures sped up the rate at which young cod burned calories while reducing the food available for the cod to consume.

“They get weak and die or get eaten by something else,” said Barbeaux, who in October presented preliminary survey findings to scientists and industry officials at an Anchorage meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The 2017 trawl net survey found the lowest numbers of cod on record, more than 70 percent lower than the survey found two years earlier.

Barbeaux said the cod decline likely resulted from the blob, a huge influx of warm Pacific Ocean water that stretched — during its 2015 peak — from the Gulf of Alaska to California’s offshore waters.

Biologists tracked increases in bird die-offs, whale strandings and other events such as toxic algae blooms. Even today, its effects appear to linger, such as in the dismal survey results for salmon this past summer off Oregon and Washington.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

Whale research to highlight changes in gulf

November 2, 2017 — BAR HARBOR, Maine — Upcoming new research into the feeding habits of baleen whales in the Gulf of Maine – one of the fastest-warming bodies of water on the planet – could shed light on impacts of climate change on oceans worldwide.

The study of whale foraging ecology will be undertaken by members of College of the Atlantic’s Allied Whale marine mammal research program, in partnership with Cetos Research Organization, during a five-year project beginning in spring 2018.

Paired with data from a similar Allied Whale study done before temperatures began rising so dramatically in the gulf in 2004, this new research will give scientists their first broad picture of how the ocean’s top predators are adapting to a rapidly changing environment.

“The warming gulf has the potential to radically affect prey structure, and we have the control data from before the warming started to go by,” said Allied Whale Director Sean Todd, the Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Science at COA and a principal investigator on the project.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

 

WHOI Led Research Team to Develop System to Predict Changes in Ocean Temps

October 30, 2017 — WOODS HOLE, Mass. — A research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has received a federal grant to develop a system to predict changes in ocean temperature.

The system will estimate seasonal and year-to-year temperature changes in the Northeast U.S. Shelf, which is seeing some of the highest ocean warming rates in the world and is home to a highly productive and commercially important marine ecosystem.

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole and Stony Brook University are also part of the research team.

“Changes in ocean temperature hugely impacts the living organisms in coastal waters,” said Young-Oh Kwon, an associate scientist in WHOI’s Physical Oceanography Department and lead investigator of the new project.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com