Saving Seafood

Request for Proposals: Climate Change and Communities Program

October 29, 2024 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:

The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council is soliciting services to support its Climate Change and Communities Program (CCCP). Contractors and services are required to carry out projects as supported through NOAA’s Inflation Reduction Act funding. Contract services will support the Contractual Service Items below (See full Request for Proposals for additional details):

1. American Samoa CCCP coordinator to provide oversight and coordination of all Council CCCP projects and activities occurring in American Samoa in support of the four priority areas.

2. Mariana Islands CCCP coordinator to provide oversight and coordination of all Council CCCP projects and activities occurring in the Mariana Islands in support of the four priority areas.

3. Scenario Planning coordinator(s) and facilitator(s) for:

  • S. Pacific large vessel (Hawaii Longline and American Samoa Longline) fisheries;
  • American Samoa, Mariana Islands and Hawaii small-boat fisheries.

4. Contractor(s) to conduct regulatory reviews of the Council’s Fishery Ecosystem Plans (FEPs) and management regimes for U.S. Pacific Island fishery resources – American Samoa Archipelago FEP; Mariana Archipelago FEP; Hawaii Archipelago FEP; Pelagic FEP and Pacific Pelagic Remote Island Areas FEP.

5. Contractor(s) to review and update protected species-related fishery management processes to ensure flexibility and adaptability to climate impacts and ecosystem drivers. Contract services are sought to:

  • Incorporate climate effects and population trends in predicting and managing protected species interactions in U.S. Pacific pelagic fisheries – Hawai‘i longline (HILL) fishery case study;
  • Develop adaptive strategies and framework for managing climate change effects on protected species interactions in U.S. Pacific pelagic fisheries;
  • Develop plans for incorporating workshop outcomes into the management regime.

6. Community Engagement and Capacity-Building coordinator(s) to oversee efforts to engage Pacific Island communities to identify emerging impacts of climate change on fishing and underserved communities and to oversee capacity-building efforts as supported through the CCCP.

  • Coordinate and convene two rounds of public meetings per year throughout the Council’s jurisdiction to understand impacts and issues communities face resulting from changing climates.
  • Develop, coordinate and host pilot training/vocational program for Pacific Island underserved fishing communities to provide for new opportunities and build capacity in U.S. Pacific Island fisheries.

Interested persons or entities should submit one (1) proposal clearly identifying to which of the Contractual Service Items above they are applying. Proposals may target any single service item or combination thereof on a time and materials basis. Applicants shall include a timeline for completion of each service item project included in the proposal, with a maximum of two years to provide all contract deliverables. 

CONTRACT PERIOD: The contract is expected to begin in January 2025 and end in December 2026.

HOW TO APPLY: Proposal submissions should include the following items (maximum 10 pages; 8.5x11inch paper; 12 point font; single space): (a) Project Principal Name, Co-principals, Affiliation and Contact information (email address, phone, mailing address); (b) Statement clearly identifying which Contractual Service Item(s) is/are being applied for; (c) Statement addressing the qualifications and requirements as stated above and in the attached Appendices for Contractual Service Items 3-6; (d) Compensation rate on a time and materials basis, inclusive of all taxes and fees, for principals, co-principles and subcontractors; (e) list of sub-contractors and services to be provided; (f) travel matrix including cost for airfare, lodging, ground transportation and per diem; (g) a curriculum vitae or resume for project principals, co-principals and sub-contractors; and (h) list of other participants as appropriate.

Interested persons or entities should submit one (1) proposal clearly identifying to which of the six (6) Contractual Service Items above they are applying. Proposals may target any single service item or combination thereof on a time and materials basis. Applicants shall include a timeline for completion of each service item project included in the proposal, with a maximum of two years to provide all contract deliverables. 

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Proposals will be accepted until 5:00 p.m. November 22, 2024 (HST), or until a contractor is engaged, whichever occurs first. Proposals may be submitted by e-mail (attach materials in PDF) to info@wpcouncil.org or via regular mail to: Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, 1164 Bishop Street, Suite 1400, Honolulu, HI 96813. 

 

New research visualizes how fishing communities can change fishing habits to adapt to climate change

October 23, 2024 — In a massive research project spanning five years and stretching the length of the Northeast seaboard, a Wellesley College professor is examining how various fishing communities can change their fishing habits in order to adapt to climate change.

Rebecca Selden, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Wellesley, is creating a “spatial sea map” designed to illustrate the adaptive styles of 266 fishing communities stretching across the East Coast from North Carolina to Maine. Her research, conducted with colleagues from four other institutions, was published on October 15 in ICES Journal of Marine Science.

Selden’s project is one of the first to provide detailed, high-resolution information about how individual communities could change their fishing patterns in response to . Such community-level information is critical to understand which communities might be most vulnerable or resilient to changes in the distribution of species that they fish.

Climate change is changing the seascape in many ways, Selden notes. The water is changing—becoming more acidified, for example. Species are relocating in order to adapt to changing water temperatures. And the ocean is being used in new and different ways—for ocean-based wind turbines, for example.

“These changes can challenge fishing communities that rely on ,” Selden says. “Many communities have diversified what they catch, or where they fish, to cope with changes in where fish are found.”

Read the full article at PHYS.org

The Lobster Industry’s Demise May Be Overstated

October 21, 2024 — Damian Brady spends a lot of his time in lobster boats, scooping up, counting, and measuring baby lobsters in the Gulf of Maine. Along with counts from scuba dives and fishing hauls, Brady’s data goes into the comprehensive Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System that helps managers regulate the fishery. Brady also looks at “lobster settlement” — under what water conditions do these baby lobsters decide to settle in? He has studied decades of lobster booms and busts, refining the models in search of a “crystal ball,” as he calls it, on lobster futures.

Climate change has course-adjusted the Gulf Stream northward, warming the waters of southern New England, and driving a northward movement of lobster populations. It feels like history repeating: Science suggests warming waters caused the Rhode Island lobster industry to collapse earlier, going from 22 million pounds in 1997 to just over 3 million pounds in 2013.

But in Maine, lobsters are still a vital industry. On a good year, 100 million pounds of lobster may cross the state’s docks, bringing in more than $400 million. Maine’s boon from the northward lobster migration was a record-breaking lobster haul in 2016. But then lobster counts began to decline consistently, year after year into 2023. The fishery’s worst fear echoed across the docks: A Rhode Island-style collapse was heading toward Maine.

But Brady, after years of careful study, is not seeing that future. What many announced as the beginning of the end, he calls a “regime shift.”

The shift drove a downsize in the Maine lobster fleet, particularly from southern Maine towns such as Portland.

“The center of lobstering has moved [north], from the center of Maine to Downeast Maine,” Brady said.

Above Portland on a map, “Downeast” is where Maine juts into the Atlantic Ocean by way of many small islands. There, the island fishing town of Stonington brings in the largest lobster catches. Its boats are able to reach the deep, federal-permit waters far offshore where lobsters are now settling.

“There was a particular boom in deep water settlement,” Brady said, reporting the most recent surveys, “places we haven’t really looked before, or looked at much.” To scientists, new habitats call for more data.

Read the full article at Ambrook Research

Biden administration races to shell out billions for clean energy as election nears

October 21, 2024 — The Biden administration is shelling out billions of dollars for clean energy and approving major offshore wind projects as officials race to secure major climate initiatives before President Joe Biden’s term comes to an end.

Biden wants to establish a legacy for climate action that includes locking in a trajectory for reducing the nation’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Former President Donald Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden’s landmark climate and health care bill and stop offshore wind development if he returns to the White House in January.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told The Associated Press on Friday it would be “political malpractice” to undo clean energy incentives that are benefiting all pockets of America, with most of the investments going to counties with below-average weekly wages and college graduation rates.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

MAINE: Invasive blob-like creatures are clogging Maine fishing gear

October 8, 2024 — Warming ocean temperatures are boosting the populations of small blob-like creatures in Maine’s coastal waters, causing problems for fishermen.

The small invertebrates, several species of which are invasive, are attaching themselves in large numbers to lobster traps and aquaculture equipment, at times creating a major hassle for harvesters as they try to tend to their gear.

“The month of September, they come on like gangbusters,” Hilton Turner, a lobsterman and chair of Stonington’s harbor committee, said about the tunicates, which are better known as sea squirts.

Read the full article at Fox 23

The Case for Seafood Self-Reliance

October 1, 2024 — Scan the seafood case at your local grocery store and you’re likely to see the same staples, no matter where you are: shrimp, salmon, tuna, tilapia, cod. Most of it crossed international borders to reach you.

The U.S. is the world’s second-largest seafood importer, despite the fact that U.S. fishers catch 8 billion pounds of seafood each year. Much of the fish landed here is eaten elsewhere. That conundrum makes it harder for American fishermen to sustain their operations and forces fish to be shipped thousands of miles before it reaches the dinner table. Climate change and global crises disrupting the international market only add to the complications.

Fisheries would be healthier and more sustainable if fish caught locally were consumed locally. But the discrepancy is by design, says Joshua Stoll, associate professor at the University of Maine and founder of Local Catch Network, a hub of seafood harvesters, businesses, researchers, and organizers that supports the growth of community-based seafood.

“We’ve built roads around the world that don’t have exit ramps to our local communities when it comes to seafood,” Stoll says.

A healthier system more reflective of the diversity of U.S. seafood is attainable, Stoll says, if we invest in connecting harvesters and consumers at the regional level. In a paper published in Nature in June, he and his colleagues found that seafood independence—the ability to meet the country’s consumption needs through its own production—is “within reach” for the U.S.

From 2012 through 2021, U.S. fishermen caught 76 percent of the country’s seafood needs on average, Stoll and his colleagues found. As recently as the 1990s, the average was 98 percent. Those numbers are based on the federal recommendation of eight ounces of seafood per week per adult, or 26 pounds annually; Americans currently eat about 20 pounds each per year.

Read the full article at the Civil Beats

UN chief warns of ‘rising tide of misery’ from swelling seas

September 26, 2024 — UN chief Antonio Guterres warned on Wednesday that surging sea levels are creating “a rising tide of misery,” as a coalition of small island nations declared that their sovereignty must be respected even if their lands are subsumed.

Nearly a billion people worldwide live in low-lying coastal areas, increasingly vulnerable to storm surges, coastal erosion and flooding — while Pacific islands face growing threats to their economic viability and even existence.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the global mean sea level has risen faster than in any prior century over at least the past 3,000 years, a direct consequence of human-caused global warming triggering the melting of ice on land and the thermal expansion of seawater.

“Rising seas mean a rising tide of misery,” said Guterres, speaking at a summit that placed sea-level rise at the top of the international agenda at the UN General Assembly.

Over the past century, as global temperatures have risen about one degree Celsius (1.8F), sea levels have gone up 160 to 210 millimeters (six to eight inches) — with about half of that amount occurring since 1993, according to NASA.

Read the full article at KPVI

MAINE: Study reveals climate change toll on Maine’s kelp forests

September 26, 2024 — Parts of the warming Gulf of Maine have become inhospitable for kelp forests, according to new research from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay.

Between 2001 and 2018, a team led by senior research scientist Doug Rasher combined dive surveys of kelp population and data on ocean temperature to compile the first detailed census of Maine’s kelp forests in nearly 20 years.

The results were startling, Rasher said. Maine’s kelp forests were devoured by a green urchin overpopulation in the 1980s and 1990s, but rebounded around the turn of the century.

“We anticipated that with the rise and fall of the sea urchin fishery and the absence of sea urchins in the ecosystem, that kelp forests should have been widespread and pretty healthy across the coast of Maine,” Rasher said.

But that’s not what his team found, according to the results of their research published in the journal Ecology. Kelp forests persisted off Maine’s northern coast but south of Casco Bay they had almost disappeared.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

They’ve Got a Plan to Fight Global Warming. It Could Alter the Oceans.

September 23, 2024 — In a quiet patch of forest in Nova Scotia, a company is building a machine designed to help slow global warming by transforming Earth’s rivers and oceans into giant sponges that absorb carbon dioxide from the air.

When switched on later this year, the machine will grind up limestone inside a tall green silo and release the powder into the nearby West River Pictou, creating a chalky plume that should dissolve within minutes.

The effect could be potent, scientists say. Rivers contain carbon dioxide that is constantly escaping into the air, where it traps heat and warms the planet. But adding limestone converts some of that carbon dioxide into a stable molecule that instead stays underwater and washes into the sea, where it should remain trapped for thousands of years.

“The beauty of it is how simple the technology is,” said Eddie Halfyard, a freshwater ecologist and co-founder of CarbonRun, the start-up building the $400,000 limestone machine, with plans for many more. “We let the water do most of the work.”

With the dangers of climate change growing and greenhouse gas emissions soaring, scientists and entrepreneurs are increasingly exploring ways to deliberately intervene in climate systems to cool the Earth. Overwhelmingly, scientists say nations must sharply cut the pollution from burning fossil fuels that is driving up global temperatures. But many also believe that some of the excess carbon in the atmosphere must also be pulled out in order to preserve a livable planet.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Climate change heavily affecting fish stocks in Japan, resulting in historically low catch totals

September 18, 2024 — Japanese catch totals of important seafood species have fallen dramatically, and climate change is the suspected cause, according to new reports, with catches of Japanese flying squid and Pacific saury suffering in recent years compared to historical averages.

The Tokyo-based National Pacific Saury Stick Net Fishery Cooperative released countrywide catch data on saury through the end of 2023, showing a 36 percent increase from the record-low catch recorded in 2022. Nationwide landings went from 7,092 metric tons (MT) to 9,525 MT. However, this is still well behind the 350,000 MT landed in 2008 and the 225,000 MT caught in 2012.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource